Almost Like Loving
by nicalyse
Summary: Maybe this is what happens when two hot Jews are forced to co-exist in the same space.


"I found a house," Rachel says as soon as Santana answers her phone.

"It's February," Santana laughs.

"If we want to live in a house that isn't a total mess next year, we have to look early. I found it online and I made us an appointment with the owner tomorrow at four."

"You're serious." It isn't a question. She's been around Rachel for long enough, been friends with Rachel for long enough, that she must know just how serious her friend is.

"I've already talked to Kurt." Rachel hesitates. "If you aren't sure that you want to live together next year, just tell me. I understand that I can be difficult to live with, and it's fine if you're having second thoughts. Our friendship is more important to me than this house, so please don't wor-"

"Shut up," Santana interrupts. "I'm in. Just tell me where to be."

Rachel smiles broadly into the phone. "My room, 3:30."

"Fine. I have an economics test to study for." She hangs up without saying goodbye, and if Rachel wasn't used to it, she would probably be offended.

* * *

The house is even more perfect than she thought it was. It's four blocks from campus and more spacious than the photos on the website made it look. The layout is a bit odd, but since it's rental house, it isn't such a problem. The front door opens into the dining room/breakfast nook, the kitchen has a lot of counter space and an attached pantry, and the sunken living room is absolutely enormous. There are two bedrooms on the main floor, and the stairs that lead to the two bedrooms on the second floor are weirdly steep. The best part? Three full bathrooms.

"It's perfect," Rachel declares as soon as they're all sitting in her car.

"It's four bedrooms," Kurt says.

"So we'll find a fourth roommate. It's _perfect_," Rachel repeats, backing out of the driveway and heading toward what they all think of as "their" coffee shop, the ridiculously named Jolt.

"You're right, it's perfect," Santana says, and though she sounds bored, Rachel knows she means it. "But we have to agree on a fourth roommate."

They're sitting around a table forty-five minutes later with empty cups when Santana makes the (probably inevitable) suggestion.

"What about Puck?"

Rachel raises her eyebrows. "Do you really think that Noah would be a good roommate?"

"I do," Santana says, and she's sincere. "He actually takes school pretty seriously, so he's not fucking around like he used to." They all know she means that on several levels. "I know he doesn't have housing plans for next year settled."

"Because it's February," Kurt adds, because he just can't resist.

"Plus, he's someone we all know and generally trust," Santana continues without pausing, though she spares Kurt a little smile.

Rachel thinks about it, picking at the insulating sleeve on her empty cup. By the time they all graduated from high school, Noah had really pulled himself together. He worked hard to get into OSU and he hadn't gotten into any trouble since the ATM incident their junior year. The four of them had been the only glee club members who ended up at Ohio State, so they occasionally spent time together, and Rachel had to admit that Noah only made her crazy about a quarter of the time, a vast improvement on the boy who had tormented her in high school.

"Is it really a good idea to live with someone we've both dated?" she finally asks Santana.

"Puck and I fucked, Rachel," Santana says bluntly. "Regularly, yes, but we were never in a relationship. And I'm getting really tired of explaining that shit to you."

"You and Puck never managed to have a real relationship," Kurt points out. "You used each other a few times, but it's not like you were ever serious." Rachel nods because he's right. "Anyway, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. We should talk to him before we worry about it. Not it," he adds, picking a piece of lint from the sleeve of his sweater.

"I'll do it," Santana says before Rachel can react. "I'll talk to him tonight and let you know what's up." She stands, winding her scarf around her neck. "Can we go? The creepy barista has been staring at our table for the last fifteen minutes and I can't tell which one of us he's checking out."

Kurt makes a face. "Ew."

* * *

Puck can tell by the way Santana's looking at him that she's not seeing the humor in the situation the way he is, but really? Bitch just suggested that he move in with her, Berry, and Hummel. Shit's hilarious.

"Are you finished yet, asshole?"

"You cannot be serious."

"It's not like we aren't all friends," she points out. "The house is actually really great for a rental. It's big, and we all have different schedules, so it's not like we'll be in each other's faces all the time."

He can't believe she's actually the one they sent to convince him of this. "Why me?" he asks, even though he really just wants to say no.

"Because we're all friends," she repeats. "It's pretty fucked up, but we trust you. And I really don't feel like being the man of the house."

Puck smirks. Santana really is more man than Hummel, even if he likes the dude. "I don't believe that Berry's down for this. And living with two of my exes and a gay dude?"

Santana rolls her eyes so hard he wonders if it's true that they could get stuck in the back of her head. "We. Didn't. Date. God, I'm so fucking sick of saying that." He just raises his eyebrows as she glares at him. "Unless you have a vagina I don't know about, it isn't a problem."

He scowls. "I'll think about it."

"Fine," she says, rising from his desk chair. "Call me when you're ready to say yes." She leaves the room without saying goodbye.

He fully intends to call her the next day and tell her no, but he catches himself thinking about it when the reading for his biology class fails to hold his attention. The thing is, he knows Santana, and she wouldn't have asked him at all if she didn't think he might go for it. She hates to be told no, and if she says the house is big enough for the four of them, it is. And even though she still has uber-bitchy moments, Puck thinks that he and Santana probably could live together pretty peacefully. As long as Kurt doesn't get some crazy crush on him (which Puck thinks is unlikely), he knows they won't have many problems.

Rachel Berry, however, is a different story. She's demanding, she talks too much, and he thinks she's certifiable about ninety percent of the time. He isn't sure he can live with that kind of crazy. She'd chilled a bit since high school, he knows, but hanging out with someone is completely different than living with her. Not to mention the fact that she's still fucking hot. Sometimes when he saw her all he could think about was what she would look like naked, underneath him and moaning his name.

And it's definitely a bad idea to sleep with your roommate.

Fuck. If he was already thinking of her as his roommate, he was going to go along with this, wasn't he?

He grabs his phone to send Santana a text.

_I have to see this place before I say yes._

* * *

He didn't realize he'd have to go tour this house with Rachel.

Puck is basically sold when he sees the bedrooms, even though he knows they're probably going to fight over who ends up in the one with the en suite bathroom. Seriously though, the house is big enough that they would be able to stay out of each other's faces, and the walk to campus is less than ten minutes.

"I'm in," he says. They're walking back to campus with their hands shoved in the pockets of their coats.

"Can you live with us without being an asshole?" Rachel asks.

He smirks. He likes it when she swears. "Can you live with anyone without being a crazy bitch?"

She shoots him a look, but he knows she knows he's kidding. "I'm serious, Noah."

"I know you are. And yes, I am capable of not being an asshole. And splitting rent four ways will be super-cheap," he adds, nudging her with his elbow.

Rachel walks without talking for about a block, but he can tell she's just dying to say something. "I really hope you don't plan to have a different girl in your room every weekend," she finally says.

He snorts. "Did you tell Santana that?"

"I did," she laughs. "She promised. Of course, she also told me that she likes to go home with them because she likes to take souvenirs."

"She's like a dude who takes girls' panties, but better," Puck snickers, and he likes that Rachel laughs with him. "That collection is going to be epic by the time we graduate."

"If we're living together, we'll get to see every new addition."

"And hear the fucked up story behind it," he adds.

She scrunches her nose. "Some of her stories are disturbing."

* * *

Their lease starts on August 1, and Rachel refuses to waste even a single day. She coordinates the move from Lima back to Columbus, and she's blowing up his phone with plans and details.

The four of them haven't really seen one another all summer. Santana and her sister spent six weeks in Santorini and Rachel's dads took her to France for two weeks after she spent all of June at a musical theatre workshop in Chicago. Puck and Kurt were both in Lima, but he and Kurt have never really been the kind of friends who "hang out," plus Puck was working like crazy, cleaning pools and taking shifts at Sheets 'n Things so he wouldn't have to work much once school started.

The week leading up to the move is fucking ridiculous. Between Santana's parents and Rachel's dads they're able to furnish their living room and kitchen. (Puck's contribution: "Just don't make me watch football on a girly couch, please.") They use his employee discount at Sheets 'n Things, and he will _never _understand how they managed to spend that much fucking money. It's a damn good thing Dr. Lopez doesn't actually look at the credit card statements before he pays up.

The caravan down to Columbus on the morning of the first is completely ridiculous. Rachel's dads drive a moving truck with all of the new furniture trailed by six other assorted vehicles. Puck and Burt wind up doing most of the heavy lifting when they get to the house (of course), and Puck is terrified that he's going to have another heart attack. Rachel's daddy and Puck's mom go grocery shopping and fill the pantry and refrigerator with enough food to last through Halloween.

He knows it's better than moving into the dorms, but this whole thing is still a clusterfuck.

His mom cries when she leaves, but he doesn't really feel bad because Rachel's daddy does too.

Choosing rooms had been easier than he expected. Puck and Santana are upstairs because Kurt and Rachel both claimed that they couldn't stand listening to either of them have sex, and neither Puck nor Santana minds hearing the other. (It's not like they haven't heard each other before.) Kurt and Rachel drew straws (literally) for the room with the en suite, and when Rachel won she actually didn't gloat.

Burt leaves last, staying until he's helped Puck set up the sweet ass TV in the living room. (God bless Santana's rich, indulgent father.) As soon as Burt's car disappears around the corner, Puck runs upstairs and digs out the bottle of Crown Royal he bought with his fake ID the night before. He carries it to the kitchen, where he pulls four glasses from the cabinet and begins to pour. (His mom spent an hour hand washing glasses, plates, bowls, and coffee mugs before she left. Insane woman.) "Yo! Kitchen!" he shouts.

Kurt, whose bedroom is right off the kitchen, appears first. "You bellowed?" Puck hands him a glass and grins when Rachel comes up the short hallway next to the stairs.

"Puckerman, the hall closet up there is now home to my boots and sweaters," Santana announces as she comes down the stairs. "Suck it if you don't like it."

He ignores her words and hands her a glass. "We're going to drink to being roommates."

Rachel looks doubtful. "Noah, I'm not sure about me and whisky."

He ignores her too, lifts his glass. "To roommates."

They all repeat his words and clink their glasses together before drinking. Kurt shudders, but Rachel looks surprised. "That's actually really good," she says.

"Oh, Rachel, we're going to corrupt you yet," Santana says, dropping an arm around her shoulders with a smirk.

* * *

Rachel is actually a little surprised at how easily they fall into routine in the few weeks. She puts together a message center in the kitchen with everyone's class schedules, a list of important phone numbers (including each of their parents, the landlord, and the Chinese place that hasn't had any health violations in the last five years), and a whiteboard meant for important messages. Puck and Santana write filthy things on it, but she doesn't really mind. She expects it and probably would have been a little disappointed if they hadn't.

Santana insists that they continue their _True Blood_ tradition, curling up on the couch in the living room for each new episode and ogling all the shirtless men (and women, for that matter). Rachel and Kurt are taking a stage makeup class together which leads to absolutely endless discussions and debates over each of their projects, and she and Noah walk to campus together for the sociology class they have together on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10. It's the only class either of them have on Friday, so they go to a late breakfast at Remy's, a diner with incredible cheese fries and french toast, every week.

Somehow, it makes sense that the first roommate fight is between her and Noah.

She's woken up on a Thursday morning in September when Noah comes crashing into her room. "Wake up!" he yells.

"What the hell?" Her morning class was cancelled, and since she didn't have to be anywhere till one, she decided to sleep in. (This might have a little bit to do with the _Real Housewives_ marathon she watched with Kurt till 2 am.) "_Get out_." She's very aware that all she's wearing is a tank top and panties.

"You have to move your car right now, Berry."

"What? No, Noah, walk." She pulls the comforter up over her head.

"I can't. I need my truck and your car is blocking me in." He grabs the comforter and flips it back.

"Puck!" Her cheeks flame (because she's half naked), but she climbs out of bed and crosses the room, grabbing her keys off the dresser. "Just take my car and get out!" She hurls the keys at his chest and is furious that he catches them.

He doesn't say anything, but he slams her bedroom door, and then the front door, when he leaves. One of her windows faces the front of the house, so she can hear her car start and pull out of the driveway.

She wants to go back to sleep, but she's so frustrated she can't even sit still. Instead she goes to the kitchen to make coffee (she doesn't bother to put on pants since Noah's gone), slamming cabinets and the refrigerator until Kurt opens his bedroom door.

"Rachel," he says, his voice flat. He's standing in his doorway in a pair of navy blue pajamas. "Shut up."

Her shoulders droop. "Sorry, Kurt. Puck just woke me up."

"Whatever," Kurt says, closing the door behind him, and she feels bad for waking him since it was his class that was cancelled too.

When she gets home from class that afternoon, her car is back in the driveway. She closes the door quietly and hangs her bag on the back of one of the chairs in the dining area, slipping her shoes off before padding through the kitchen in her sock feet. She can hear music playing behind Kurt's closed door, but she ignores it to go down the steps into the living room where Noah is sitting on the couch. The TV is on, but he has a textbook open in his lap.

"I'm sorry," Rachel finally says. She's standing at the bottom of the steps looking at him.

"It's fine. I'm sorry I came into your room like that."

She nods, coming over and dropping onto the couch next to him. "So we're okay?"

"We're good," he agrees. "Totally not sorry I saw you half-naked though."

"Oh!" She hits his thigh with the back of her hand when he laughs.

* * *

Sometimes, Puck just has to get out of the house. His roommates are two chicks and a gay dude, and that usually works out in his favor. The house is clean and it always smells good, and the girls are both in the habit of running around in little shorts and tank tops. But there are days when the little things start to make him a little crazy, like Kurt and Santana bickering over the new issue of _Vogue _or Rachel's fucking ridiculous pink Hello Kitty popcorn popper just _sitting there _on the counter. He shares a bathroom with Santana, and even though she does her hair and makeup in her room there are _so many_ bottles and tubes and jars and boxes in the shower and medicine cabinet that he doesn't even want to know what they're all for.

He's playing rugby on an intramural team, and he still has his group of guys from last year, so it's all good. He goes out with James and Eddie one Friday night, and they wind up at a house party across the city from Puck's house. He's had a a few shots of whiskey and played a bunch of rounds of beer pong with James, so he's not exactly sure how much he's had to drink, but he's definitely drunk. Eddie's girlfriend comes to pick them up, but Puck tells them to go ahead because he's trying to close the deal with a girl.

Her name is Mickey (which is stupid), and she's tall with dark hair and these lips that would look fucking amazing wrapped around his cock, and she's been all over him all night. Puck knows that Rachel was looking forward to having the house to herself for the evening, but he's pretty sure he can get Mickey to take him home with her. She's sitting on the counter in the kitchen (and he has no clue whose house he's in), and he's standing between her legs, his lips at her ear as he offers (dirty) suggestions for how they should spend the rest of their night. All at once, she pushes him away and hops down and puts like, two feet of space between them.

"What the fuck?"

"My boyfriend just walked in," she explains, just as some frat douche snags her around the waist. "Hi, baby. This is Puck. He's in my economics class," she lies.

Puck rolls his eyes. "Later." Fucking bitches who waste his time. He doesn't care that she has a boyfriend; he cares that her fucking boyfriend is shutting down his game.

The party has completely died down, and he knows there aren't any more prospects here. Also, his ride is gone and he has no fucking clue where he is. Goddamn it.

He goes outside and walks around a bit until he can find a street sign and the house number. One problem solved. He tries calling both James and Eddie. James is already home (and drunk) and Eddie doesn't answer. Kurt ignores his call. (It rings twice and goes to voicemail. Puck isn't stupid.) Santana answers, but she's somewhere so loud that he just hangs up on her.

He's annoyed with himself when he chooses Rachel's name in his contacts.

"What do you want?" she says when she answers, and he knows he woke her up. She's only rude like that without provocation when you wake her up. Which, he supposes, is provocation.

"I know I'm an asshole, but can you please come pick me up?"

He can hear her moving around, and he assumes that means she's getting out of bed. Apparently she was serious when she told the three of them that she would never leave them stranded drunk somewhere. "Where are you?" He rattles off the address. "Give me fifteen minutes. Don't go anywhere."

"Thanks, Berry."

"You aren't going to throw up, are you?" she asks as soon as he's in her car.

"What? No?"

"Well, you didn't walk in a straight line to get to the car, so I'm just making sure."

"'m drunk." Of course he isn't walking in a straight fucking line.

"I see that," she says, laughing a little.

He leans his head back against the seat and looks over at her. She's wearing an OSU sweatshirt and a pair of these tiny shorts that she's always wearing around the house. Her hair is up in a ponytail and her face is bare. "Fuck, you're hot, Berry."

She looks sideways at him. "Thank you." She sounds like someone talking to a drunk who's saying stupid things.

"I'm serious," Puck says, concentrating on pronouncing each word clearly. "I don't say it because we live together and shit could get awkward, but you're fucking hot."

"That's...strangely thoughtful," she says after a minute.

They don't talk for the rest of the ride home, but it isn't an uncomfortable silence. He's drunk enough that basically nothing would be uncomfortable, but living with Rachel, even if it's only been a couple months, he's kind of figuring out how to read her. When they get to the house she helps him up the porch steps and then up the stairs to his bedroom. She brings him a glass of water and puts the bottle of Advil on the nightstand before going back downstairs.

He wakes up when Santana comes home, because she's brought some guy with her and of _course _she's loud in bed. It's fucked, but he thought he was going to be getting laid tonight, and hearing Santana get hers makes him hard. So he rubs one out and tries not to think about the fact that he's getting off to the sound of one roommate while picturing another.

* * *

Rachel has to admit that the Halloween party was a good idea. She wasn't too thrilled about the idea of having a party in her house - she's very particular about her space - but her roommates wore her down, and she's having a lot of fun. The four of them are very different people with very different groups of friends: business students and theater nerds and and intramural athletes and honors students and music lovers, plus Santana's motley assortment of sexually ambiguous potentially-more-than-friends. Noah convinced Kurt to let him put a beer pong table in the kitchen, and their ridiculously creepy basement is actually an appropriate place for a keg at a Halloween party.

Honestly, this basement. It's damp and dark with odd angles and low ceilings, and the concrete floor is broken in places. Noah is the only one who will go in past the washer and dryer just inside the door, and Rachel insists that they keep it padlocked from the inside because she's certain that there must be a way for rapists or murderers or rabid racoons to get into the house through that basement.

It gives her the creeps just to think about it. Which is why she's drinking the Jameson and Coke Noah reccommended instead of venturing anywhere near that keg.

She let Kurt and Santana convince her to dress up in a modified Catwoman costume (just ears instead of a mask, and the body suit is neither leather nor shiny), and she's pleased with the decision when Santana introduces her to Cale, the boy who sits next to her in geology. His eyes rake up and down her body quickly and she has just enough whiskey in her system to think it's flattering rather than sleazy. He's tall with dark hair and pale blue eyes, and she immediately considers taking a page out of Santana's book and sleeping with him tonight. He flatters her and flirts with her, and he seems impressed that she's a girl drinking whiskey.

A few hours later she finds herself sitting with Cale on the stairs, watching Noah and one of his friends play the last game of their "epic" beer pong tournament and laughing when Cale whispers mildly suggestive things into her ear. They've kissed a bit, but she's sobered up enough to remember that she's not really a one-night stand girl like Santana. (Who has already gone upstairs with her conquest. If she listens hard enough, Rachel can hear her roommate moaning, but she's still drunk enough to find it amusing rather than embarrassing.)

She's in the middle of kissing Cale when she feels a foot nudge hers. When she looks up, Noah is glaring down at her. "Do you mind?" he asks.

Rachel stands, moving aside and pulling Cale with her. "Sorry."

"Whatever." Puck is being completely rude and she doesn't understand why, but she glares at his back when he moves past them to go up the stairs.

"Look, unless you want to show me your room," Cale says softly, his fingers sliding over her wrist, "I think I'm going to head out."

She nods. "I'll walk you out." She pretends not to notice that his face falls a little, but she thinks she might make up for a little bit when she lets him cup her breast when she kisses him goodbye on their porch. (Apparently she's still drunk enough not to think about the fact that they live across the street from a 3-story apartment building and anyone could have been looking out their window just then.)

She pushes past a few of Noah's rugby friends to get back into the house, and the only person in the kitchen is Puck. "What the hell is your problem?" she demands.

He glances over at her for a second, then goes on stacking the beer pong cups. "Nothing?"

"You didn't have to be so rude to him."

"You were in my way," he answers with a shrug. "You and the frat boy."

Rachel's eyebrows furrow. "I don't think he's a frat boy. But that isn't the point!"

"Whatever, Rachel." He rinses his hands and dries them on the towel hanging from the oven handle, then turns off the kitchen light before heading to the stairs. "Sleep it off."

She's furious (and not totally sure why), but she remembers to lock the front door. There are people she thinks are Santana's friends asleep in the living room, but she isn't sure about that either, so she locks her bedroom door as well. She manages to get out of her costume, but can't be bothered to take off her makeup, and she falls asleep on top of the covers in her bra and panties.

* * *

Puck fucking _hates _that Rachel starts dating that frat boy douchebag. (And yes, he actually is in a fraternity. Santana told him.) Puck hasn't always been a good, upstanding guy, but he never pretended to be. It's all over Cale, like he was sprayed by a skunk. He is going to fuck Rachel over, and it pisses Puck off.

But he keeps his mouth shut. He and Rachel keep walking to campus and sitting together in sociology and having their Friday breakfasts, and they never, ever talk about the fact that she's dating some ridiculous fucking Sigma Chi bastard. Other than Halloween, which he knows they would both blame on being drunk, he's never volunteered his opinion on Cale, and she hasn't asked. Part of him wants her to, so he can tell her exactly what he thinks.

He knows the night Rachel finally gives it up to Cale. It's two weeks after Halloween, and when he comes home that Friday night after a COD marathon (don't judge) with some of the guys, she isn't home. He accidentally (on purpose) falls asleep with his bedroom door open, and he knows he would have woken up if someone had come in the front door because the thing squeaks like a motherfucker no matter how many times he sprays WD-40 in the hinges.

He's sitting at the dining table plowing through a giant bowl of Rice Krispies when she comes in just before noon. She's carrying her heels, and her hair is in a ponytail; it's textbook walk of shame. She says hello, and he juts his chin at her because his mouth is full. She goes to her room and shuts the door, and he decides that it's a great day to go for a run, even if he did just eat half a box of cereal.

He listens to Pantera and runs until he feels like he might throw up, then goes home and takes a four hour nap.

* * *

Santana talks her into going to a party the Monday before Thanksgiving. It's at a house where a trio of girls live, one of whom Santana is determined to sleep with. Rachel figures she'll just drink a soda and drive Santana home if her plan doesn't pan out, then be in bed by midnight so she can get up to walk to class with Kurt in the morning. She realizes that she's been completely brainwashed, living with Santana, because the predatory bent to the evening doesn't even register as unusual.

The house is more crowded than she expects, and she and Santana (who agreed they should stick together) keep getting stopped by people they know. It takes a while to get to the kitchen, and Rachel is completely surprised to find Cale standing next to the makeshift bar sucking face with some redhead.

And she isn't mad at all.

Technically, he isn't cheating on her. Their relationship is "casual." But the thing is, they just had this conversation _yesterday_, the one where they both admit that they aren't interested in anyone else, they aren't seeing anyone else. That sort of vague first step to maybe becoming something more.

She slips past him to grab a bottle of Jack Daniels from where it's sitting, neglected (there are easily twice as many girls here as boys) on the counter. His eyes widen and he pushes away the girl, spluttering as if he thinks he can actually explain himself. Rachel holds up a hand before he can even manage a full word.

"Don't bother." She can feel Santana watching as she look him up and down, then glances at the girl he was kissing. "The sex wasn't that good anyway." And it's true. She'd actually been hoping it would be one of those "better with practice" things. Sex is like pizza and all, but she'd had better. The look of utter shock on Cale's face is strangely satisfying.

She crosses the kitchen to grab two red plastic cups, filling each halfway with whiskey and handing one to Santana, who smirks. "You aren't even mad, are you?"

Rachel takes a little sip of the whiskey and realizes that she's acquired a taste for it since moving in with Noah and Santana (for whom it is the preferred liquor). "He really wasn't good in bed," she says with a shrug. "And he's kind of stupid."

Santana tosses her head back and laughs, then clinks her cup against Rachel's. "Let's get drunk. One of the boys can come pick us up."

It only takes Santana an hour to close the deal, which is, conveniently, how long it takes Rachel to drain her cup of Jack Daniels and switch to beer. Santana takes Rachel's keys so she can get home the next morning (after a solemn pinky swear not to drive before sunrise), then disappears into a bedroom with a girl Rachel thinks looks an awful lot like Brittany Pierce. She finishes two beers and drops her phone three times, which she thinks is a sign that it's time to call Noah. He agrees to come get her. (After all, he owes her.)

Someone asks her to be the fifth in a round of strip flip cup (girls versus guys, of course), and it doesn't take any convincing at all. She's a little annoyed that the girls she's playing with are so awful, especially when they lose the first three rounds and she's standing there in someone's basement in a black bra and lace panties. She's trash talking the boys for losing their first round (she's insisting that the boy across from her was distracted by her lips, which is actually probably the truth) when she sees Noah come down the stairs into the basement where they're playing.

"Noah!" She bounds across the room and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him in a hug. "I'm sorry, I forgot you were coming."

"You're drunk," he says, and she can tell he's trying not to laugh as he holds her at arm's length, his hands on her waist. "And almost naked. Do you have clothes?"

She turns and grabs them from where they are folded neatly on the arm of the couch. She hands him the shirts, kicks off her heels, and shimmies into her jeans. She puts on the camisole when he hands it to her, but refuses to take the sweater. "It's too hot," she insists.

"It's like, 40 degrees outside, Berry."

Rachel ignores him, slips her feet back into her heels, and starts up the stairs, knowing he'll follow her. She waves when the people she's already forgotten about (because she's drunk) start calling goodbye.

"Where's your coat?" Noah asks when they're nearly to the front door.

"In my car." She stops short and laughs when he nearly runs into her. She holds onto his forearm as she stumbles a little in her heels. "Santana has my keys, so we can't get it."

"Where is Santana?"

"Back bedroom. Having sex with a Brittany-look-alike."

"Like, Britney Spears?" he asks, and she can't help giggling.

"Like glee club Brittany," she finally manages. "Can we go?"

He holds out the sweater and gives her a look. She obeys with a pout, then lets him lead her out the door and down the street to where his truck is parked. She gets in the driver's side when he unlocks the door, sliding across the bench seat before he gets in. "It's cold," she states. She's surprised that he doesn't seem annoyed when he takes off his coat and hands it to her.

He turns the heat on high, pointing the vents at where she's still sitting in the middle seat. "How much did you drink?"

She scrunches her forehead as she thinks, then decides that using her hands might help her when she starts counting aloud "Four rounds of flip cup, so that's two beers. And two before that. And half a glass of Jack Daniels."

"Half a _glass_? Are you aware that you're tiny and a lightweight?" She just giggles and nudges him with her shoulder. "What happened to not drinking and being Santana's ride if she needed one?"

"Cale was there. Making out with some sorority pledge. Drinking just seemed like fun."

"Shit, Rach, I'm sorry."

She knows he's lying. He might be sorry it hurt her feelings, but she knows how much he hated Cale. "I'm not. I didn't like him that much. He was a douchebag." She looks up at him as he stops at a red light. "You were right."

Noah groans. "Oh, say it again." She starts giggling and she's not sure she'll ever stop, even though she knows it wasn't that funny. Fuck it, she's drunk, and laughing feels good even if it's making her abs ache.

"You, Noah, were right about Cale being a douchebag." She finally manages through her giggles. She catches sight of the clock on the dash. "I am so not going to class tomorrow."

"You're going to be completely hungover."

"Probably." She's still drunk enough not to be bothered by this thought.

He helps her out of the truck when they get home and reminds her to be quiet in the kitchen because Kurt is asleep and actually _is _planning to go to class. She scrawls an "I'm not going to class" note on the message board for Kurt, then takes the bottle of water Noah offers and lets him lead her to her bedroom. She sits in her desk chair because she's afraid she might get dizzy if she sits on her bed, and he sits with her while she chatters about nothing. She knows he's making sure she drinks the water and eats the saltines he hands her.

"All right, darlin'," he says after a while, rising from where he's sitting on the end of her bed. "I'm going to bed. You gonna be okay?"

"I'm excellent," she answers, and it's pretty much the truth. She feels like she might be sober enough to lie down without the room spinning.

He leans over to kiss her forehead. "Good night, lush."

"Night."

He closes the door behind him, and she can hear him walk up the stairs. She changes into a tee shirt, climbs in bed, and immediately begins shivering. She can't stand to sleep in pants (she hates the way they bunch up around her legs under the covers), but her room is freezing. The whole house is a bit cold because she refuses to turn on the heat until they can't stand it any more. Environmentalism is important.

She's tired, but she's freezing and her mind is racing because she's still a little drunk, and she thinks this whole night would be better if there was a warm body in her bed. Even if it was Kurt or Santana. She really isn't upset about Cale, but the quasi-cheating thing stings a little in the back of her mind. She just feels like cuddling. Quite possibly because she's drunk.

Rachel doesn't really think about it. She climbs out of bed, slides her feet into pink fuzzy slippers, and heads upstairs. She knocks lightly on Noah's door, opening it when she hears him answer.

"Are you okay?" he asks. He sits up on his elbows to look at her standing in his doorway.

"I'm fine. Noah, can I sleep with you?"

"What?"

"Sleep," she repeats. "It's cold in my room, and I'm lonely."

He looks at her for a moment, and she's afraid he's going to say no. She's just about to turn and leave when he says, "Yeah. C'mere."

She can't hold back the little noise of contentment that escapes her throat when she slips under the covers with him. It's so nice and warm. She curls into Noah's bare chest and drops to sleep with his hand resting on her hip.

* * *

Puck wakes up before his alarm goes off, and he's not sure if this whole thing is because God loves him or hates him. Rachel is curled up in his bed with her back pressed against his chest, wearing a tee shirt and panties and breathing deeply. He considers skipping class to stay in bed with her, but he knows it's a bad idea, so he gets up carefully, trying not to jostle her, and goes to shower.

He should not want to have sex with his roommate. Seriously.

He's hanging up his towel and reaching for the boxers he brought with him when the door flies open. "What the fuck, Santana?"

She holds up the nail file she used to jimmy the lock, and he wishes for the seven _thousandth _time that he hadn't taught her how to do that back in 8th grade. "Tell me you didn't have sex with Rachel last night."

"I didn't have sex with Rachel last night."

She throws the nail file at his chest, which accomplishes exactly nothing. "Then why the fuck is she in your bed, Puckerman?" she hisses.

He snags her wrist and pulls her the rest of the way into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her so maybe they won't wake Rachel. "I picked her up, I brought her home, I gave her water and crackers, and I put her in _her _bed," he says, his voice low. "She came upstairs, said she was cold, and asked to sleep in my bed." He doesn't tell Santana that Rachel said she was lonely because it just doesn't seem like any of her damn business.

Santana looks at him closely for a moment, then seems to relax. "Fine. Don't fuck this up," she adds, but he has no iea what she's talking about. She turns on her heel and leaves the bathroom, and he wonders what the hell just happened.

When he gets home from class that afternoon, Rachel is curled up on the couch in the living room wrapped in a fleece blanket and a sweatshirt she got from the back of his desk chair, and Santana is sprawled out in an armchair so big Andre the Giant could sit in it comfortably. (It's really the best chair ever.) They're all driving back to Lima the next morning for Thanksgiving, but they decide to spend the evening sitting in the living room watching a _Futurama _marathon on Comedy Central. The girls convince him to go to the diner for cheese fries, and they all fall asleep watching TV before midnight.

* * *

When they come back after Thanksgiving break, Rachel announces that they are going to celebrate everything this holiday season: Hanukkah, Christmas, Winter Solstice, and Kwanzaa (because even though he thinks it's a stupid holiday, one of her dads _is _African-American). Between Rachel's crazy and Kurt's taste for decorating, it only takes two days for the entire house to look like the Hallmark store threw up on it. Christmas trees, menorahs, dreidls, lights, tinsle, garlands, mistletoe, ears of corn, snowmen, and a million other ornaments fill the house.

Puck thinks it's crazy, but he totally digs it.

The last night of Hanukkah falls on a Wednesday, so Puck and Rachel get out of their Thursday classes (gotta love playing the Jew card, seriously) and drive back to Lima together to go to dinner with their parents. Their families have known one another for years, but they seem to have become more friendly since Puck and Rachel became roommates. As a result, the Puckermans and the Berrys are celebrating the end of Hanukkah together.

His sister, Abby, is holding his hand while they light the candles, and Puck looks over at Rachel and realizes that she looks really beautiful in the candlelight. And it's kind of a problem, because he's been thinking these sorts of things about Rachel Berry, his roommate, pretty fucking frequently. She's thought she was hot since high school, but thinking she's hot and thinking she's beautiful are completely different. It's hot when she shuffles into their kitchen for coffee in the morning in panties and a long tee shirt. It's hot when she's had a few drinks and she sits on his lap and tells him that he's her "favorite straight male roommate." It's hot that she's started drinking whiskey more than she drinks anything else.

Just that morning, they were walking to campus for sociology, and it was fucking freezing. They were both bundled up like crazy, and he was teasing her for wearing mittens. She hip-checked him, told him that she didn't care for his commentary on her sartorial choices, and laughed when he rolled his eyes at her. Her cheeks were all pink and her eyes were bright and she was just beautiful.

Completely fucked up.

The six of them sit around the table in the Berrys' dining room for dinner, and between Rachel and Abby, Puck doesn't really have to say much of anything. His mom wasn't really into these sort of around-the-table family dinners when he was growing up, and it's kind of nice to have this time. He understands why Rachel was so insistent that they have monthly family dinners at their house in Columbus; he might never admit it, but he totally looks forward to those dinners, and not just because Rachel and Santana both know how to cook.

Their parents give them an enormous bag of leftovers, and Rachel and her daddy are both crying when they leave. (No, he doesn't get it.) She hands Puck her keys before he even gets a chance to offer to drive, and she finally stops sniffling when they're out on the highway.

"You good?"

She looks over at him, and he notices that her eyes are still shiny. "I won't see them till after New Year's."

"Oh, right." Her dad has to go to London for business for two weeks in early January, so her daddy is going with him and they're going to spend six weeks spanning the new year touring Europe.

Rachel blows out a breath of air and rolls her shoulders. "I'm fine. I'll have plenty to keep me busy in Columbus, and you'll be there."

Right. When Puck found out that Rachel was going to be staying in the house over winter break, he'd changed his plans to stay with her. He didn't really like the idea of her alone in that big house, and it wasn't like he had anything elaborate or interesting planned over break. Kurt was going back to Lima and Santana's parents had rented a house in Vermont, so it would just be the two of them for four weeks.

He's kind of looking forward to it.

* * *

The last couple of weeks of classes fly by in a flurry of exams, term papers, and performances interspersed with time spent in practice rooms, the library, and holed up in her room. Rachel lets Santana and Puck convince her to have a dead day eve party at their house, and instead of spending the next day studying like she (and the university) intended, she spends it nursing a wine hangover with Kurt and a platter of completely ridiculous (amazing) nachos Noah makes for them.

Kurt goes back to Lima, she and Noah take their last final, and then the two of them drive Santana to the airport. It makes Rachel absolutely crazy that she wants to cry instead of celebrating the end of the semester.

"You listen to fucking awful radio stations," Noah complains on the way home.

She wants to glare at him, but the traffic is ridiculous around the airport. The moron in the van in front of her can't seem to decide if he wants to go 70 or 55, and she can't do anything about it because she's boxed in. "Shut up."

She hates the phrase ("rude and unnecessary"), and he knows it. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she bites. "I swear to God, if this asshat doesn't get out of my way, I'm going to run him over." She's always had a bit of road rage, borne of impatience, but it's only in the last few months that she's started swearing to go along with it. She knows, without a doubt, that it's because she spends too much time with Noah and Santana, who punctuate almost everything they say with curses.

He snickers and reaches for the radio. "That sort of anger needs music that isn't Miley fucking Cyrus," he states, scanning through the stations. "This!" he declares, stopping at a station with heavy guitar and drums and turning up the volume.

She spares him a sideways glance as she guides her car into the left lane and cracks up when she realizes that he's air drumming with the song. It reminds her, for a second, of Finn, but the look on his face is so completely _Puck _that thoughts of her ex evaporate quickly.

She's still laughing when the song ends and he turns down the volume. "_That _is road rage music," he declares.

She just shakes her head as she takes her exit, blowing out a breath when she stops at a red light. "It's just weird that we won't see them for a month." She's really, really used to having Kurt and Santana around every day. She needs Kurt to criticize her wardrobe and curl up to watch musicals, and she needs Santana drag her out of the house and coerce her into drinking. She's not sure what she's going to do without their weekly shouting match about using all the hot water.

"Yeah," Noah agrees. "But hey, a whole month without hearing Santana scream random dude's names."

"She's only done that twice."

"No. You don't share a wall with her, Rachel. You've only _heard _it twice."

"Oh," she says, wrinkling her nose.

* * *

He can hear the kettle whistling when he walks up the steps, and she's pouring water into a mug when he steps into the house. "We're going out tonight," he announces, crossing the dining area and stopping at the bottom of the stairs in the kitchen to pull his coat off.

"What?" Their house is always cold, so she's wearing plaid pajama pants and a black OSU sweatshirt. Her hair is up in one of those messy knotted ponytail things, and he knows it's crazy that he thinks she looks hot.

"Jon and his roommates are hosting a beer pong tournament at their place, and you are going to be my partner."

"I'm not good at beer pong," she points out, blowing on her tea.

"No," he agrees, "but you're awesome at distracting the other team when they're guys, and I'm awesome at distracting the other team when they're girls. We're like, the best partners ever."

"You're a pig and an egomaniac."

"You like it," he counters, and she shakes her head. Actually, he thinks she really does like it.

She sips her tea and stares off in space thoughtfully. "I guess I should wear something low-cut if the whole point is for me to be a distraction."

"Fuck right, you should."

"And as incentive, you're going to cook me dinner." She pats his cheek and smirks before heading to her room.

"Seriously, Berry?"

"And making ramen doesn't count as cooking," she adds. He can't help grinning when he hears her door close.

He digs some cheese tortellini out of the freezer, thanks God that she's not vegan any more, and makes the marinara sauce himself. (Fuck you. Of course he knows how to cook.) Rachel insists that they open a bottle of the wine that her fathers sent back with them when they were in Lima for Hanukkah, and they actually sit at the table and talk while they eat. She tells him about her contemporary dance class that morning (he totally doesn't get it), and he tells her about working at the clusterfuck that is the campus bookstore the day after finals end. If they weren't both dressed like slobs it might look like they were having a dinner date.

She takes her time getting ready, but he doesn't really mind; she's proven over the years that it's always worth the wait. He changes into jeans and a gray sweater, then sits on an ottomon in the middle of the living room to play Mario Kart. He hears Rachel's shoes click across the kitchen floor, so he pauses the game and looks up at the doorway.

And says a quick prayer of thanks to whichever deity is blessing Noah Puckerman this holiday season.

She's standing at the top of the steps that lead into their living room, framed in the doorway in dark, skinny jeans, a low-cut red silk camisole, and a loose, lightweight black cardigan with the sleeves pushed up a bit. Her hair has gotten long in the last couple of months, falling nearly to her waist and curling at the ends, and her eye makeup is all dark and smoky. She moves to the bottom of the steps in her black stilettos and does a little turn. "Do you think this will be distracting enough?"

Jesus fuck.

"Um, yes," he states emphatically, and he's rewarded with a bright smile. "In fact, let me know if anyone tries anything, because someone is definitely going to when you look like that."

Her smile shifts, and he thinks evil is probably the right word for the expression in her eyes. "Perfect. Let's go."

The tournament they're involved in is pretty small, and they make it to the semi-finals without drinking too much. Even though Rachel takes off her sweater (and no, Puck doesn't look, because the point is to distract the other team, not himself) they lose, mostly because she's tipsy and her depth perception sucks when she drinks. He gets caught up in a conversation with Jon and one of the other guys who lives in the house, and then he watches the last game of the tournament, so it's a while before he goes looking for her.

She's perched on the kitchen counter holding a glass of something-and-Coke (he assumes). There's a guy standing next to her, taller than Finn with blonde hair, and Puck can tell from the expression on her face that she isn't interested. She sees him crossing the room and smiles. "Noah!"

He leans against the counter next to her and nods his head at the glass. "Jameson," she tells him, smiling as she offers him a drink. "Noah, this is Brian."

Puck takes a swig of her drink. "'Sup?" he greets, jutting his chin at Brian.

"Hey," Brian greets. He looks at Rachel. "This is your..."

"We live together," she answers simply, and Puck can't help smirking.

Brian nods. "Cool. I'm gonna go get another drink. Nice to meet you, man."

Puck just nods, taking another swig of Rachel's drink before handing it back to you. "Do you have like, a douchebag magnet that I'm not aware of?

She giggles because she's drunk. "Maybe? I don't know, but that one wasn't even getting my last name."

He snorts and hands back her glass, feeling pretty good about the fact that there's only a drink or two left in the bottom. Drunk Rachel is fun, but wasted Rachel is most definitely not. The party hasn't really wound down, but he's got a good buzz going and she's half-drunk, so he leans up and asks her if she's ready to go. She nods, knocks back the last of her drink, and let's him help her off the counter.

"Fuck, it's cold," he bites out when they're outside. It's just three blocks to their house, so it's a pretty quick walk, but it is Ohio in December

"Being cold makes me feel less drunk," Rachel says, looping her arms through his and tilting her head down so her scarf covers her chin. She's quiet for half a block, then looks up at him. "Can we have popcorn when we get home?"

"Sure." He's concentrating on walking as fast as possible without Rachel tripping and falling on her face in her heels. To be honest, he's not feeling too steady on his feet either.

They run up the sidewalk when they finally make it to the house, and Puck fumbles with the keys while she stands next to him, chanting, "Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry," and bounces up and down. He smacks her ass when she darts past him once the door is open, and he really likes the way it sounds when she giggles. "I'm going to change," she announces. "And then Hello Kitty will make us popcorn."

He groans, and she laughs again as she walks to her room. She reappears in yoga pants and a zippered hoodie, singing "Yellow Submarine" as she measures popcorn kernels into the popper. He just leans against the sink and watches her. She stops singing when the popper starts making noise and looks over at him. "What?"

"You're fucking cute, Rachel." She blinks at him, and he shrugs.

She seems to accept this, because she keeps moving around the kitchen, pouring two glasses of water from the filter pitcher in the fridge and dumping the finished popcorn into a big bowl. "It's too cold to sit in the living room," she declares while Puck salts the popcorn.

Their living room is probably as big as all four of their bedrooms put together, with a high ceiling, a sealed-off fireplace at one end, and four steps that lead up to the kitchen at the other. To keep it at a comfortable temperature all winter, the rest of the house would have to be 80 degrees.

"Your room or mine?" she asks, rolling her eyes when Puck shrugs. "Fine. Mine. We'll have to choose a drunk movie."

"A what?"

"A drunk movie. A movie we watch if we're drunk together," she explains as they walk to her room.

"That's stupid."

"It is not stupid. I watch _The Hangover_ with Kurt and _Mean Girls_ with Santana. Well, we don't really watch them," she admits. "It's more background noise while we talk or whatever, or the movie that plays when we fall asleep."

"No musicals, no chick flicks," he states instead of arguing. He still thinks it's stupid, but he's not going to win. He stands behind her when she kneels at the DVD rack next to her TV, eating popcorn by the handful.

"_Across the Universe_-"

"Is a musical, Rachel. No." She huffs and mumbles something under her breath that he can't hear. He leans over her and grabs a case. "_Fight Club_. It's perfect." He hands her the case and turns to flop onto her bed.

"Fine." She puts the disc into the player, then moves around the room, turning on lamps on her desk and nightstand and flicking off the overhead. Puck realizes how dry his mouth is and has to take a drink of water; he must've put too much salt on the popcorn.

Then she sits next to him, snagging the popcorn bowl and nudging him a little with her elbow. Her hair's a little messy and she's basically wearing pajamas, but her eyes are still all smokey, and fuck, she's _Rachel_.

If you ask him later, he'll tell you he did it because he was drunk. Truth is, he's barely buzzed any more, and he does it because he wants to. She looks over at him and smiles, and he catches her chin between his thumb and forefinger, watches the way her pupils dilate. He just brushes his lips against hers at first, taking it further when she doesn't pull away from him laughing. She sighs into his mouth, and he takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss, his hand slipping into her hair as his tongue slips between her lips.

He starts to feel breathless, so he pulls away, leaning his forehead against hers. "Noah," she breathes, and he just shakes his head. He doesn't want to hear her tell him that it was wrong. "Noah," she repeats, her voice stronger. "Is it because you're drunk or because you wanted to?"

He pulls back and looks her in the eye. "Because I wanted to, Rachel, fuck." His fingers are moving against her scalp and he can't quite make them stop. "Because you're pretty."

She nods, smiling a little. "Okay. Will you watch the movie with me?"

He chuckles. He knows that this is her way of saying that it's okay, but she doesn't want to do it any more. It stings a little. "Sure."

She curls up against him and is asleep in less than fifteen minutes. Puck almost wishes that he'd gone straight up to his room when they got home. Now that he's kissed her, he knows he's going to have to do it again.

* * *

They don't talk about it.

Noah isn't there when she wakes up, gone to work at the bookstore. (There's a post-it note stuck to her alarm clock with a filthy suggestion for how she should spend her day alone, and it makes her blush before she drops it in the trash can.) She stays in bed watching an _America's Next Top Model_ marathon until she can't ignore her growling stomach. She really, really doesn't want to, but she can't help thinking about that kiss.

They've kissed before. Back in high school, when they dated a few times, and once or twice in passing since coming to college. Still, it's always been pretty innocent compared to the sorts of things they've each done with other people.

Of course she's attracted to Noah: She's a straight woman with eyes. She's always wondered what it might have been like if they'd ever actually tried being together, but they had terrible timing. High school was a mess of Finn and Jesse and Quinn and Santana, and Rachel had spent most of her freshman year of college in a relationship witeith Colin. Now they're living together, and Rachel Berry certainly isn't going to start dating her roommate.

So why can't she stop thinking about that kiss?

* * *

He's slouched in his desk chair playing his guitar when he hears her coming up the stairs. He looks up when she appears in his doorway, but keeps strumming. She's still bundled up in her coat and scarf, and her hair is kind of all over the place.

"Snow!" she practically sings, spinning her way into the room.

"Huh?"

"It started when I was in dance, but there's already like, two inches on the ground." She nudges his foot with hers. "Come play."

He looks up at her like she's crazy. "Seriously? Rachel, I've seen snow before. Like, a week ago."

"That was just a dusting," she says dismissively. "This is the first real snow of the year, and I love the idea of a white Christmas."

He puts his guitar aside and shoots her a pointed glance. "Jews, Berry. We're Jews."

"You know how I feel about the secular aspects of Christmas, Noah." She claps her hands - actually claps - when he stands up and grabs his coat. She's not going to quit until he does what she wants, and it's not worth the headache. She skips down the stairs ahead of him and is already standing at the front door, hopping from foot to foot, when he gets to the kitchen.

He lets her grab his hand and drag him out the door after he's shoved his feet into boots. It's freezing, but he has to admit that the snow is pretty in the twilight. Fat, wet flakes are swirling heavily, and the yard is completely covered. It's a little disorienting since he hadn't even realized it was snowing.

Rachel is out in the middle of their little front yard, spinning in circles with her arms flung out. Her head is tipped back and her hair is flying, and she's laughing betwen singing bits of "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland".

All he can think is how fucking cute she is.

He acts on impulse and steps off the porch, crossing the yard and snagging her around the waist. Her giggling is infectious, and he finds himself laughing with her as they spin, both trying to catch the falling snowflakes on their tongues. She turns to face him, her arms coming up around his neck as she catches her breath. "Isn't it beautiful?"

She's all wild hair and pink cheeks and there are snowflakes catching on her eyelashes. "Yeah. Beautiful," he murmurs before he has to kiss her.

Her lips are warm and soft and he immediately wishes he hadn't waited so long to do this again - because it's amazing. One of his hands slides to the small of her back and pulls her against him fully, and her gloved fingers brush the nape of his neck. She pulls away and looks up at him with wide eyes. "Noah-"

He cuts her off with his lips, catching her off-guard and taking the opportunity to deepen the kiss. He's completely aware that they're standing in the snow in their yard. He completely doesn't care. He kisses her until his lungs burn, and when he pulls away he leans his forehead against hers. "God, Rachel."

"Noah, it's freezing," she says, and he just nods dumbly as she takes his hand in hers. "C'mon. I'll make hot chocolate."

She sings as she moves around the kitchen ("White Christmas" now, and she winks when he quirks an eyebrow at her). Rachel Berry rarely does things half-assed, and he knows that she takes her hot chocolate recipe seriously, so he sits on the counter and watches her warm milk and measure ingredients.

Even though he wants to pin her against the refrigerater and kiss her stupid.

She finishes the drink with a heavy-handed splash of peppermint schnapps ("Tis the season.") and hands him a steaming mug. She stands in front of him and keeps her eyes on his as she takes a sip. "Why did you kiss me?"

"Wanted to," he answers simply. It's the truth.

"Noah."

Right. _Why _did he want to.

"I kind of always want to kiss you," he admits, watching her eyes as he speaks. It's weird that he's not worried that she'll react badly. "You looked so happy that I forgot all the reasons I'm not supposed to."

"Like what?" Her voice is small.

He shrugs. "We're roommates with history."

"That didn't stop Santana and me," she says, and his eyes widen. "Sorry, probably not the right time for a joke."

He lets it go, but files it away for future discussion. (If that actually happened, he wants details.) "I want to do more than kiss you, Rachel."

"Yeah?"

He sits his mug on the counter, takes hers and does the same. "Yeah." He catches her elbow and pulls her closer. She grips his forearms, and she looks up at him, all big eyes and long lashes. His hand slips through her hair, moving till he's cupping the back of her neck. He waits. Watches as her lips part, her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

"Noah," she finally says. "Say something. _Do _something."

"I don't know if I'll be able to stop once I start."

The breath she releases is shaky, and her grip on his forearms tightens. "Kiss me, Noah."

He closes his eyes and holds his breath, because he needs a minute to decide how he wants this to go. He's been fantasizing about her for years (he's a dude, it happens), and he's imagined every scenario. But now he actually has to make a decision, and it seems really fucking monumental. He wants to make her crazy, to draw it all out as long as possible. He's always wondered what she looks like when she loses control, so he intends to make it happen as many times as he can.

He slips down from the counter, pressing his body to hers. She's looking up at him, and he feels like he might actually lose his mind if he doesn't taste her.

His hand grips the back of her neck, tilting her head so he can kiss her, deep and slow. She tastes of peppermint and chocolate, her tongue moving gently against his while her fingertips trace the shell of his ear, and he almost thinks that he could be satisfied with just kissing her. Then she rises onto her toes to deepen the kiss further and makes this breathy little noise in the back of her throat.

It's not enough.

He wraps an arm around her waist, pinning her against him as he starts moving toward her bedroom, and it's a good thing she's so light because her feet aren't really moving. She laughs, breathless, when he walks her into the door jamb, and he mutters an apology as he skims his lips up her jaw, sucking softly on the spot behind her ear he's apparently never forgotten drives her crazy, even though he found it years ago. Her hands move to the hem of his sweatshirt, pushing upwards, but he catches her wrists and traps them at her sides as he presses her into the door, running his tongue over the hollow above her collarbone.

"God, Noah." She slips her hands away from his and pulls her sweater and tank top over her head in one swift motion, smirking at him when she drops it on the floor. Her bra is black, umembelished, sexy even though it isn't necessarily intended to be, and he forgets to be annoyed that she's denied him the chance to undress her. Her chest is flushed, her breathing rapid as he brushes his fingertips over the swell of her breasts. He brings his eyes up to hers and watches her eyelashes flutter as he traces the valley between her breasts. "You're making me crazy," she whispers.

He grins and lets her tug his sweatshirt up over his head, dragging his tee shirt with it. "Turnabout, Rach." He reaches behind her and unhooks her bra, gazing at the new skin revealed when he traces his fingers up over her shoulders to slip the garment off. He brushes his pads of his thumbs over her nipples, enjoys the way they pebble before leaning down to trace his tongue over the shell of her ear. "You've been driving me crazy for years."

She rolls her hips against his, drawing moans from them both. Her hands trace over his chest, down his abs to settle on his belt buckle while he explores her breasts with his hands, palming one while he rolls the nipple of the other between his thumb and forefinger. When she starts tugging at his belt, he grabs her hands and kisses her, hard. "Not yet," he murmurs against her lips.

The noise she makes is impatient, and she flattens her hands against his chest and pushes, slanting her hips against his as she steps, walking until the backs of his knees hit the mattress. He drops down, stopping her with his hands on her hips before she can straddle his lap. "Slow down, Rach."

Her eyes are hot when she looks down at him, but they flutter closed when he dips a finger under the waistband of her jeans. He watches her face as he unbuttons them, and he thinks it's fucking hot that her head drops back and those little sounds fall from her lips just because he's taking off her clothes. He has to smile when he sees her panties, navy cotton patterned with popsicles. They're so goddamn cute that he's smiling when leans forward to kiss each of her hipbones. Her fingernails scrape over his scalp, making him groan as she moves to straddle his lap and kiss him, grinding herself down against his cock. He can feel her heat even through his jeans, and as much as he wants to throw her down and drive into her, he's determined to make it all last.

She leaves wet kisses along his jaw, biting down gently on his earlobe before whispering, "Noah, please." He dips his fingers into the front of her panties, and she lets out a hot little gasp against his ear. "Please, touch me."

"Fuck, you're wet." He rolls her, pressing her into the mattress a skims his fingers over her, teasing her folds. He kisses her lightly, pulling back a bit when she tries to deepen it, smirking at the frustrated noise she makes. She's rolling her hips against his hand, trying for more friction, chasing a feeling, and he loves seeing her like this. He brushes his thumb over her clit, pushes a finger into her, and slips his tongue into her mouth all at once, and she moans so low in her throat that she doesn't even sound like herself. "Jesus, you're tight, Rachel." He taps her clit again, nips at her jaw. He loves the way that she trembles under him. "So fucking hot."

"Please," she breathes, and the way she looks up at him is just too much. He doesn't completely know how it happens, but her panties are gone, and he's between her legs, his hands tracing the impossibly soft skin inside her thighs as he looks at her. Her fingernails are scratching lightly over his scalp, her chest practically heaving as she looks down at him. He flicks his tongue against her clit and drops his arm over her hips when they buck up against him. She makes a breathy little noise, and it sounds so good that he needs to hear it again.

He knows he's good at this. The first time he did this for someone, watched her fall apart and tasted her on his tongue, he'd felt an incredible rush of power. The rush has never gone away, no matter how many times he's done it, but he's never been quite so _determined _before.

She's quiet, all whimpers and sighs and moans, and Puck likes that she's surprising him. (He'd always had her pegged as a screamer.) He experiments with lips, teeth, tongue, slips one and then two fingers into her, sliding and curling and rubbing. He's reading her body, repeating the motions that make her thighs quiver and her breath catch. His teeth scrape across her clit and her hips jerk so hard that he actually laughs before he does it again, looking up as he curves his fingers inside her, rubbing and watching her face as she clenches around them. Little sounds, high pitched and somewhere between a gasp and a moan fall from her lips as her back arches.

He watches as she rides it out, then slides up her body to press a kiss to her shoulder. "God you're gorgeous," he murmurs, brushing her bangs out of her eyes before leaning in to sip at her lips. "You have no idea."

She swallows hard. "Noah, I want you." Her nimble little fingers are working at his belt, and even though she's the one who came, his mind is fuzzy. He pushes himself away from her to stand and get rid of the rest of his clothes. She locks her eyes with his as she says his name.

He moves over her, bracing his weight on one forearm while the other hand smooths over her body, grazing her hipbone, tweaking a nipple, carding through her hair. She wraps her hand around his length, twists her wrist, and he drops his forehead to hers with a groan. He thrusts into her hand because he can't help it; his control is slipping. "Condom," he manages, squeezing his eyes shut tight. He's reciting the stages of mitosis in his head because if he doesn't stop thinking about Rachel and what she's doing to him, he's going to embarrass himself.

She moves quickly, fumbling through her nightstand before deftly rolling the latex over him and shifting until he's settled between her legs. She says his name softly, and he looks down to meet her eyes. "Please. I need you."

He slides into her slowly, and the combination of the way she feels around him, tight and hot, and the way she keens his name is almost too much. "_Fuck_, Rachel." She rolls her hips and whimpers, and it's completely fucked up, but he would swear he has tunnel vision. The only thing he's aware of is Rachel, pushing and touching and kissing until she flies over the edge again. She looks amazing, and her fingernails are biting into his bicep and his shoulder blade, and after just three more strokes, he falls over the precipice with her.

* * *

It's easily the most intense sexual experience of her life. She's dazed; she vaguely notices that Noah is moving, discarding the condom and pulling the quilt folded at the end of her bed up over the two of them as he lies beside her again. She rolls onto her side to look at him. His eyes look very green. "That was..." She trails off with a little laugh, reaching out to brush her fingertips over his cheekbone. "Why did we wait so long to do that?"

He shrugs even though she knows there are dozens of reasons that they're both well aware of. He snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her closer to him. "Your room is fucking cold."

"Mmm," she agrees, "but I'm still pretty warm."

He grins and drops a kiss to her forehead. "You're hot as fuck, Rach."

She moves into his chest, tangling her legs with his as she kisses him slowly. "I'm tired."

"Go to sleep." His voice sounds just as tired as she feels.

When she wakes up, the room is completely dark, Noah is asleep beside her, and her stomach is growling. A glance at her alarm tells her that it's after eight, and between her dance class and Noah, it's no wonder she's hungry.

She slips out of bed carefully, making sure she hasn't disturbed him before stepping into her pink slippers and grabbing his sweatshirt to pull over her head. It's a bit large on him, so it falls nearly to her knees as she walks into the kitchen. She finds a box of Triscuits in the pantry and carries them with her as she wanders through the house, flipping the switches on the power strips that control the dozens of strings of twinkle lights she insisted they hang.

She's not entirely sure what to make of what happened. Physically, of course, it was amazing. It's not really a surprise. Noah has had plenty of experience, yes, and she's not a blushing virgin by any means, but they've always had good chemistry. She'd entertained the idea that the chemistry would translate to the bedroom, and it had. In spades. But the fact is, they're college students with busy lives, and they live in the same house with two other people. There's history between them, and they have a future as friends. Rachel just isn't sure that they can have a future as more than friends. She loves him because he's her best guy friend (Kurt has always been one of the girls), and she isn't positive that it's worth risking that.

Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? They're both adults, so maybe they can approach this in a mature way and see where it goes. Because, really, she's not sure she's willing to give up what this _could _be just yet.

She's back in the kitchen, eating crackers with one hand and pouring the neglected hot (now cold) chocolate down the drain with the other, when Noah finds her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on the top of her head. She turns in his arms and tilts her head back to give him a chaste kiss. "Hi."

"Have I ever told you how good you look in my clothes?" He's running his fingers though her hair, and it feels wonderful.

"No. But thank you." His hand drops down to her thigh, sliding upwards and taking the bottom of his shirt with it. His eyes are trained on hers, and she gasps his name when his knuckles brush over the apex of her thighs.

"You make the best sounds," he murmurs, brushing his fingertips over her and smiling at the way her breath catches. Then he lifts her up, her legs wrapping around his hips, and carries her back to her room so he can listen to her make more of those noises.

They're sitting in the living room later, space heaters keeping them warm as they eat pizza on the coffee table and watch reruns of _The Office_. Puck drops his crust in the box and turns to look at her. "So, do we need to talk about this or whatever?"

She looks at him with wide eyes. "About what?"

"About the fucking mind-blowing sex we just had," he says, looking at her like she's stupid. He knows better. "Twice."

Her eyes glaze just a little, and he feels like a fucking stud. "Do we need to talk about it? Or do you mean we need to talk about the repercussions of the mind-blowing sex?" she asks. "I think if we talk about it, it's probably just going to end up happening again."

She's teasing him. He'd be annoyed if it wasn't so hot. "We can try that later," he says, "but I mean what happens now? Are we dating? I'm not sure you can really be fuck buddies with someone that you live with."

"No, I don't think you can. But I don't think dating a roommate is a good idea."

"Probably not," he agrees because he knows she's right. He's disappointed though. They're incredible together sexually, and hanging out with her, especially these last couple weeks, has been the most fun he's had in a while. And he's a dude in college; other than not flunking out of any of his classes, most of his effort goes toward having fun.

"But," she continues, "I don't really see a problem with having a sexual relationship with my roommate."

She has a look in her eye that he's already thinking of as _that look_ because it drives him crazy. They end up christening the couch, and she makes him pinky swear that they won't tell Kurt or Santana.

* * *

So, they're basically dating.

It's hard to see it as anything else. They don't have classes, he only works about fifteen hours a week, and her dance classes don't take up that much time, so they spend a lot of time together. And not just naked time (though there is _plenty _of naked time). They play into stereotypes and order Chinese food on Christmas, then take shots of Southern Comfort and lime until Rachel gets the giggles and he takes her from behind on his bedroom floor. She invites him to a New Year's Eve party thrown by one of her friends from dance class, and they kiss at midnight and drink too much champagne. They end up making out in the cab on the way home, so Puck gives the driver something like a seventy-five percent tip to assuage Rachel's guilt. One morning when they're brushing their teeth in her bathroom, he somehow starts a water fight, which turns into sex, which leads to her accidentally pulling her shower curtain down. (She laughs instead of getting mad, then drags him to Target so she can get a new one.) Another day, she insists that he sit and watch _Atonement _with her; they get as far as the library scene, at which point he fucks her against the living room wall because he _has _to.

It's good. They're good.

He's trying not to think about what happens when Kurt and Santana get home and classes start again. He's really trying not to feel like a girl for being worried about it, but since he hasn't said anything out loud yet, he doesn't feel like too much of a pussy. Without all the distractions of real life - because winter break really isn't real life - they work, and he really likes it.

He comes home from the grocery store one afternoon and finds Rachel sitting at the dining table talking to Santana on speakerphone.

"Just tell me you didn't fuck on the furniture in the living room."

Puck has to bite his tongue as he carries the bags into the kitchen. The couch, the giant chair, and that one time on the coffee table.

"Of course we didn't," Rachel's lying. "I do have some sense of what is and isn't appropriate in shared spaces, Santana."

"So are you just fucking or are you dating or whatever?"

He doesn't look at her. The exact placement of the orange juice in the refrigerator is fucking vital, okay?

"We're..." She hesitates. "We're good. I'm not sure exactly what we are, but we're good."

He doesn't mean to look, but he does. She catches his eye, and she has this little smile on her face that makes him want to kiss her breathless.

"My flight will be in at four," Santana is saying, "so do you think one of you will be able to pick me up?"

"Of course. Email me the details."

"Awesome. I gotta go. I have a ski instructor's eyes to cross."

Rachel's laughing when she hangs up and comes into the kitchen, boosting herself up to sit on the counter. "I talked to Kurt too. He also asked if we had sex on the furniture." Puck smirks. Their roommates have to know that they've been everywhere. "But he isn't worried about our arrangement any more than Santana is."

"Our arrangement, huh? The good one?"

She smiles and puts her arms over his shoulders when he stands between her knees. "Yeah. Look, I don't know what's going to happen once classes start again next week, but I like what we have now. No expectations."

"Sounds good," he says, leaning forward to kiss her. "This is familiar," he murmurs against her lips, and she laughs before she pulls away.

"I'm starving. Feed me, Noah, then we can do dirty things."

He thinks for a moment, brushing a knuckle over her collarbone. "I'm going to order Chinese, and while we're waiting, I'll go down on you." He digs his phone out of his pocket, watching as she rubs her lips together. "We'll see how many times I can get you off."

"Noah-"

"Do you want egg rolls or pot stickers?"

(For the record, it was three.)

* * *

Rachel loves school. She always has. Even when she was being tormented in high school, she loved the part with new supplies and organizing, taking notes and learning new things. College is even better, because now that she's worked through the majority of her gen eds, she's really getting into her music classes. She feels like it's all time well spent.

She's kind of dreading the new semester. Not the classes or the responsibilities that go with them, but the fact that it's going to burst this little bubble she's been in with Noah.

Santana and Kurt are both back the Friday before classes start, so Rachel insists that they have a family dinner since it's been over a month. They cook together, eggplant parmesan with salad and garlic bread (Santana opens the wine and insists that she's done the most important part and therefore shouldn't have to actually _cook _anything.), and they eat in the dining room by candlelight because Kurt insists they all look better that way. Kurt catches them up on the gossip from Lima, and Santana shares a few too many details about her dalliance with the ski instructor. They both fish for information regarding Rachel and Noah's relationship, but neither gets many details.

She's not always sure of her motives for the things she does - and she's aware that's a little disconcerting - but she knows that she's keeping this quiet because she wants to keep it for herself.

They play Mario Kart, but the night devolves into a tipsy (after Santana insists on opening the fifth bottle of wine) dance party. Rachel feels a little awkward when Noah follows her to her room when she announces that she's going to bed, but it doesn't take him long to convince her that the benefits outweigh any awkwardness she might feel.

The first day of the semester is perfection. She and Santana are finally taking a class together, and her schedule is perfectly balanced so that she has plenty of time for a morning workout and a break for lunch. They're working on a new piece in her off-campus dance class, and she finally perfects a difficult bit of choreography. When she gets home Kurt is at a night class and Santana is at the gym, so she and Noah have dinner together. They go up to his room, and he plays guitar while she reads to get ahead for English until she loses patience and starts something they have to close the door to finish.

She falls asleep in his bed thinking that this could be the best semester ever.

Tuesday works hard to prove her wrong.

Her first class is boring, a dance class for her minor that is too remedial for her skills. She has to take it as a prerequisite for other courses in her program, so she resigns herself to spending an hour and twenty minutes, twice a week, being bored.

She has high hopes for her music theory class. She's heard good things about the professor and the course description was interesting, and when other students begin arriving (of course she was early) she realizes that she's acquianted with several.

Including her ex-boyfriend.

She and Colin had dated for six months her freshman year, and typical to her personality, she'd been quite invested in the relationship. Colin had been perfect; they were the same age, in the same program, and they had a lot of the same interests. They were good together, and she'd been falling for him. And she was crushed when he cheated on her.

She thought she was over it. Really. She finally believed that Colin cheating on her wasn't her fault, wasn't because of something she did or didn't do. She knew that it was inevitable that they would cross paths again, and she was prepared for it. Or so she thought until he walks into the room, nods at her, and drops into a seat two rows over. The whole thing puts her in a bad mood.

"Wintry mix" is falling from the sky when she walks out of the building (the meteorologist's term for rain and sleet together), and she can't find her umbrella in the bottom of her bag, so she's forced to walk across campus and then the four blocks to their house in the freezing precipitation. By the time she gets home, her jeans, coat, hat, and hair are soaked, and her mood has gone from bad to foul. She completely ignores the sympathetic noises Kurt makes from the kitchen, going straight to her room. She strips, leaving all of her soaking things in a pile on the bathroom floor, and takes a shower so hot it turns her skin pink.

She dries her hair and dresses in flannel pants and her softest sweatshirt, but she's still cold and bitchy, problems that will only be solved, she thinks, by tea and sleep. She's carrying a mug of chamomile tea from the kitchen back to her room when the front door opens. Noah walks in, dropping his umbrella, and smiles at her. "Hey."

She reminds herself that while men are scum, Noah is not the one who caused her foul mood. "Hi." Even if he is one of _them_. She continues on to her room and crawls under the covers on her bed without bothering to turn on music or a movie. She's going to to drink tea until she's warm or it's gone, then she's going to sleep until she wakes up or her alarm goes off the next morning.

She doesn't mean to scowl when Noah comes into the room, but she feels it on her face. "What's up?" he asks, and it's in that boy way, the one where they know something is wrong, but they have no idea how to broach a potentially emotional conversation.

"I'm fine."

"Fuck me," he mutters. "Seriously, Rach."

"I had a crappy day," she answers honestly.

He comes to sit on the edge of her bed. "Wanna talk about it?"

"Not particularly." _Especially not with you. _"I had to walk home in the sleet, but as soon as I get warm, I'm going to sleep."

"I could help you get warm."

"I am _not _having sex with you right now, Puck." His nickname comes out because her mouth moves faster than her brain, and it immediately makes her feel bad. She only calls him that when she's annoyed, and occasionally when they're having sex. (During sex though, it's a good thing.)

His eyes narrow. "That wasn't what I was suggesting, Rachel." She can tell it's an effort for him not to put the emphasis on her name. "I thought that taking a nap together might make you feel better, but if you're going to be a bitch, I'll just leave you alone." He stands and starts for the door.

"Noah, wait." He turns to look at her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. It actually does sound nice," she admits, smiling when he unbuttons his jeans and lets them drop to the floor before he climbs in bed beside her.

"It's okay," he finally says, pushing her freshly-washed hair aside so he can press a kiss to the back of her neck. "We all have shitty days."

She can tell, when she wakes up a few hours later, that Noah is awake behind her. She rolls over, tucking her hand under her cheek as she meets his eyes. "Hi."

"Hey." He brushes her bangs away from her eyes. "Feeling any better?"

She moves her shoulders. "Thanks for staying with me."

"Spending time in a bed with a hot chick? Not a problem, darlin'."

She smiles in spite of herself. "Will you tell me something?" He raises his eyebrows. "What happened with you and Quinn last year?" She'd heard that there was something going on, but Santana hadn't volunteered any details. Rachel had been going through her breakup with Colin, and, in typical Rachel Berry fashion, she was focused on herself.

He doesn't look away like she expected, and she feels a little clench in her stomach when he starts talking. "I always wondered about Quinn. After Beth..." He takes a breath, shakes his head a bit as if to clear it. "I cared about her. Before anything ever happened between us, I cared. I liked how she was such a bitch, and when you got her alone and she chilled the fuck out, she was cool. I never really got a chance with her though, between Sam and Finn and whatever."

Rachel nods. She remembers, vividly, Quinn and Finn's reconciliation their senior year. It was brief and almost amusingly unsuccessful, but at the time it had hurt deeply.

"So, last year. I guess she was dating some guy and they broke up," he continues, "because we started talking on Facebook, and then we were texting and calling and whatever. It was this big thing, and all this build up, and I wound up going to Cincinnati for a weekend to see her."

"Santana told me about that, a little. It didn't go well, did it?"

He scoffs. "Uh, no. Quinn will always think she's better than me, and she will always think that wanting me is a bad thing. The first day was good. When she pulls the stick out of her ass, she's fun to be with," he says, and Rachel has to smile, both because of the way he says it and because she knows it's true. "She had her bitch face on the second day, and I realized that it would never be different with her. Never. No matter what I do or how much she wants me, I'll never be good enough."

"Do you still want her?" She doesn't really mean to ask, but it slips out before she can stop herself.

"No. She'll always be in my head, and sometimes we talk, but it'll never be anything. I don't want it to be anything." He traces the pattern on the comforter with one finger for a moment. "I'll always have this picture in my head where we're a family. Even though I know she did the right thing, I'll always wonder what it would have been like to raise my daughter."

They've never talked about this, not this much, and she can feel her heart break a little for him. Once, during one of their short-lived high school relationships, they'd acknowledged the fact that her mother had adopted his daughter, but it had been too much, too heavy for the relationship they had then. They'd stopped talking, and she let him get to second base so that maybe they could both forget about how bizarrely their lives were connected. And they broke up a week later.

She takes his hand and kisses his palm before lacing her fingers with his. She can think of a dozen different things she could say, maybe should say, but she doesn't. Actually, talking might ruin this moment, this openness between them. She can't decide if the swelling in her heart is pain or love, but, for once, she isn't concerned with picking it apart. So she tells him that she's hungry and sits on the kitchen counter when he makes her a grilled cheese sandwich.

* * *

He knew things were going to be different when classes started. They'd talked about it, and Puck isn't stupid. He expected her to be too busy to hang out, to turn down sex because she had an early class or a late rehearsal or whatever. But he didn't expect her to run hot and cold all the time. He can't keep up with the mood swings and the weirdness, and he gets that people take out their frustrations on those they're closest too - friends and roommates and the dudes they're sleeping with - but it's getting sort of tough to deal.

She goes _off _on him one night, ranting about writing a paper and rehearsing and losing her voice, and she's so shrill and intense that he tells her to just, "Never fucking mind." She stomps to her room and slams the door, and he has no idea how asking if she wanted to go to the diner for dinner led to _that_.

"What the fuck?"

"I think the Colin thing is stressing her out."

Puck turns and sees that Kurt is at the counter making coffee - he assumes he's been there the whole time. "What the fuck?" he repeats.

Kurt's eyes widen slightly. "You don't know about Colin?"

"I don't know who the fuck Colin is or what the fuck it has to do with me, but if you know something, you better tell me."

"Are you threatening me?"

He fights the urge to reach out and shake his roommate, taking a deep, slow breath. "No. Will you tell me what's going on with crazyface in there, please?"

"You know who Colin is," Kurt says, turning with his mug and going down the steps to the living room. Puck follows because he doesn't really have a choice. "Rachel's boyfriend from last year."

"Yeah, I didn't really pay attention to all that," Puck admits, flopping into the giant chair. "Catch me up. And just the highlights, please. I don't need all the details." Well, honestly. He's known Kurt for years, he knows how this shit could go. Dude gossips more than any woman he's ever known, and he's _Jewish_.

Kurt narrows his eyes, but apparently is willing to let it go. "They're in the same program, met at a departmental reception event, and started dating, seriously, in like, October. The whole thing was reminiscent of the less dramatic portions of the Finchel relationship in high school." Puck rolls his eyes at this; he will never, ever understand the name squishing thing. "They were together for about six months. Right up until she found out that he'd been cheating on her since January."

"What an asshole." Puck is a lot of things - a lot of kind of awful things - but he's never been a cheater. Sure, lots of girls have cheated on their boyfriends with him, but he's always figured that someone's relationship is _her _responsibility, not his. It's not his job to make sure a chick is being faithful when he wants to get laid.

"He really is a prick," Kurt agrees bluntly, making Puck smirk. "It all went down two weeks before finals, so she never really dealt with it. She threw herself into studying and finals and packing and summer plans. She just pushed it aside."

"All right, so she dated a fuckwit. What does it have to with that?" he asks, gesturing in the direction of Rachel's room.

"He's in her music theory class, and you know how she can be."

Puck lets his head fall back against the back of the chair with a groan. "I hate this shit."

"We all do," Kurt agrees.

He has no idea what to do with this. For one thing, he thinks it's stupid. He gets that it's Rachel, so it's some big fucking deal, but that definitely doesn't prevent it from being stupid. He really doesn't want to talk about it. Hearing the story from Kurt was enough; he knows that if they have that conversation, he's going to hear all kinds of details that he doesn't want any part of. Short of getting her drunk or fucking her unconscious, he really has no clue what to do.

So he does nothing.

Okay, ignoring her really isn't a good idea. He knows that. He's avoiding her like the plague though, and it's a lot of work since they fucking live together, but not actually too difficult. Rachel is insane about her schedule, which means that he knows when she might be in the house during the week. Which means that he's spending a lot of time playing basketball, hanging out with the guys, and studying in the library. If he isn't asleep, he isn't at home.

This lasts for exactly six days.

She's standing in the hallway outside of his history class Wednesday afternoon, wearing her bright blue pea coat and obviously waiting for him. He doesn't say anything when he stops in front of her. He's just waiting for her to rip into him.

"You've been avoiding me." Her voice is quiet, too quiet for the hallway they're in, really, and it kind of freaks him out.

"Well, you were biting my head off every time I talked to you, so I decided to stay out of your way." It's at least half true.

"You're right." She slips her hands into her pockets. "Are you heading home now?"

"Yeah."

"I'd like to walk with you. If you'll let me."

She smiles when he nods, but she doesn't say anything else until they're outside. "I owe you an apology. My behavior has been erratic and uncalled for."

It's Rachel Berry circa junior year, and it makes him grin. "You wanna tell me why you've been all Jekyll and Hyde?"

"School is a lot of pressure," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "I've been a little frazzled with everything going on, and I took it out on you.

They're standing with a group of people at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn, so he doesn't say anything. His fists are still clenched in his pockets when they're finally alone again half a block later. "Rachel, why are you lying to me?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Kurt told me about your ex or whatever," he spits. Rachel's indignance really pisses him off for some reason.

"I'm not sure exactly what that means."

"The fuckwit cheated on you, and you never dealt with it or whatever, and now you have a class together."

He can see her nodding slowly out of the corner of his eye. "Yes. Spending three hours a week stuck in the same room with my cheating bastard of an ex-boyfriend may be contributing to my attitude. I thought I was past it, but I guess I was wrong."

It reminds him so much of high school that he's instantly furious, counting to ten and then fifty so he doesn't say something he can't take back. They're at the end of their sidewalk when he finally feels like he can speak without shouting or swearing or grabbing her by her shoulders and shaking her until she realizes how stupid she's being. "Maybe you should figure it all out. Without the...whatever it is we are." He's looking at her face, but he can't quite make himself meet her eyes.

"Okay," she says, and it's that tiny, quiet voice he knows she uses before she cries. He can't handle that shit, doesn't want any part of it, so he leaves her standing there and goes into the house, leaving the door standing open. Santana's in the kitchen, but he ignores her, going straight upstairs.

He's trying to do some reading for class when the door flies open half an hour later, and he wishes he could go back in time to lock it when Santana arranges herself on the end of his bed. "So, you want to tell me what the fuck you did that has Rachel crying her eyes out?" she asks calmly.

He glares at her. "Not that it's any of your goddamn business, but I didn't do a fucking thing to Rachel."

"Puck, I swear to God, if you don't tell me what happened, I will make your life hell." She means it. And she could probably do it. They live in the same house. They share a bathroom.

"What did she tell you?"

"Nothing. She locked her door and wouldn't let me in."

"Nice to know that you checked on her first. You're supposed to be my bro, Lopez." There's a bit of joking there, but it actually stings. They've always been on the same page, and in a lot of ways they're like the same person in two very different physical packages.

"She was crying, Puck," she says seriously. "You were mad, but she was crying."

"Yeah." She's right.

"So what happened?" She listens without comment as he relays the story, watching him thoughtfully. "So, I know that this wasn't defined or whatever, but you basically broke up?"

"I guess." Not at all, but he doesn't really want to get into it with Santana.

"But it's more than just sex." It's a statement, not a question, almost like she's thinking aloud, so he says nothing. "She needs to work through the Colin bullshit," she finally says, standing up and looking down at him. "Friday night. You, me, and my emergency credit card at the pub."

"You're on," he agrees, grinning a little as she leaves. It's nice to know that he isn't going to be frozen out all by all three of his roommates over this.

* * *

Fuck her life.

If thoughts like that aren't proof of just how much time she'd been spending with Noah, she's not sure what else to make of them.

They aren't fighting, but that might be easier than this. They're both being so polite, so courteous that it makes her a little queasy, especially since it isn't so different from they way they behaved in the first couple of weeks they were all in the house, when it was new, and they weren't completely sure it was all going to work. It breaks her heart, because there's so much more to him, to them. She misses just hanging out with him, watching television or studying or eating takeout. She misses falling asleep with his chest pressed against her back and the way his pillows smell when they sleep in his room.

She misses the sex, yes. She certainly knows how to take care of herself, but it's better with Noah.

She's sitting in her usual desk in her music theory class, waiting for the professor to arrive and get started. She and Kurt are texting, making dinner plans; he and Santana have both been wonderful since Puck told her to "figure it out," and she can't help feeling guilty for putting them through this awkwardness. Something like this was exactly why she had been so reticent to date her roommate.

Then again, they hadn't technically been dating, so she supposes it didn't matter in the long run.

She glances up when someone takes the seat next to her, and she can't help rolling her eyes when she sees that it's Colin.

"It's good to see you, too, Rachel," he says. His fake-polite voice has always been annoying. She looks at him with a deliberate smile, then concentrates on writing the date at the top of the page in front of her.

He's been leaving her alone. The entire first half of the semester he only spoke to her once (to borrow a pencil), and that was just fine. She wishes that he would stick with that.

"So, what did you do for spring break?"

Her eyebrows come together as she looks over at him. Maybe, she thinks, he'll leave her alone if she just plays along. "I went to a spa with my roommate."

"Well, you look good," he says, and she thinks he's being sincere, but he's tapping his pencil on the edge of the desk, and it's grating on her nerves. "Anyone I know?"

"Santana." Since they were still dating when she signed the lease for the house, she thinks this is information that he should remember. Of course, maybe he was distracted at the time by the trampy redhead he'd cheated on her with.

"You know," he says thoughtfully, "I always thought she was a bitch."

She looks at him incredulously, really _looks _at him. His hair is too long, and his face is scruffy, a good look on some men but not on him. She'd known that Santana wasn't his favorite person (that feeling had been more than reciprocated), but he'd never called her a name to Rachel's face. "Really?" He nods, and she smiles. "Well, I know she always thought you were an asshole, so at least you were on the same page."

She turns to face the front of the room when the professor comes through the door, apologizing for being late, but she isn't really paying attention to class. She's trying, trying really hard, to figure out exactly what she ever saw in Colin.

First, he never spoke to her like this when they were together; he was always a perfect gentleman. He's handsome when he takes care of himself (which he clearly hasn't been), with sandy hair and light brown eyes. They're in the same music program, so they obviously have similar interests, but they're different enough that their relationship wasn't boring. They had good physical chemistry (though admittedly nowhere near what she had with Noah). She'd been falling in love with him.

Then she found out that he was keeping things from her, lots of things, big things. Like the trampy redhead he worked with at the music store that he had apparently been cheating on her with for months. And he didn't realize his mistake and come and talk to her like a man. (Not that it would have made a difference.) No, she found out when he was tagged in a photo on Facebook in which the trampy redhead was sticking her tongue down his throat with the caption, _Colin and his lady_.

She hasn't ever really sat down and worked through her feelings about Colin. When he cheated on her, it broke her heart. Finding out the way she did certainly made it worse; the embarrassment magnified the hurt and betrayal she felt. He didn't just bruise her heart, but her ego, and that was almost worse. When she sat down and really thought, her reaction to seeing him at the beginning of the semester was more about the embarrassment she'd felt than it was about any residual feelings she had for him. Yes, she'd been falling in love with him, but she feels like she'd found something better since then.

She leaves class feeling a little like she does when she nails a difficult bit of choreography, or when she figures out a tricky harmony in a song.

* * *

She should probably fill Noah in on her revelations, but she doesn't know how. She doesn't even know how to go about getting him alone, let alone broaching the subject. They've become very good at dancing around one another; it's not quite avoidance, but they haven't been alone in the house, awake, more than a handful of times since that day in early February. It's been two weeks since that day in class (and seven weeks since he left her standing alone on the sidewalk, crying), but she just can't seem to pluck up the courage to start the conversation.

Worrying about it all is going to give her an ulcer.

Easter break begins on a Friday in early April, and while Santana plans to go back to Lima for the weekend like Kurt, she insists on going to a party Thursday night and driving back the next morning. Rachel isn't at all surprised when her phone wakes her just after two in the morning.

"This is a nine-one-one, Berry," Santana hisses when she answers. "I need you to come get me right the fuck now."

"You did do anything illegal, did you?" she asks, rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of yoga pants.

"No. Well, not really. Maybe a little," Santana amends. "I wouldn't get arrested or anything, but you need to get here right now."

"I'm going out the door now," Rachel tells her. "Where are you?"

"Behind a bush next to that stupid fucking statue outside the Chi Omega house."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm a little drunk," Santana admits. "So I'm hiding. In the bushes. But I'm not puking in the bushes, so it's totally kosher. And my dress is black, so it's not like anyone can see me."

"Oh my god. I'll be there in three minutes." She hangs up, and she knows exactly what's going on. The "souvenirs" Santana feels compelled to aquire from her sexual conquests have been growing increasingly elaborate throughout the year. She'd started by taking things like tee shirts and shot glasses, then knick knacks. She'd taken a little tabletop Christmas tree, a hockey stick, a chef's knife, a bong, and a copy of Madonna's _Sex _from some girl's coffee table. Rachel's a little afraid of what her roommate has gotten herself into, but she's more than a little curious.

She barely has the car stopped before Santana is in the passenger seat with a look on her face that can only be described as triumphant. In her lap is a fishbowl.

"Tell me you didn't take someone's pet."

"It's a betta," she answers.

"I cannot believe you took someone's pet!" Rachel cries. "I thought this souvenir thing was pretty harmless, but now you're taking living creatures to whom the owner could have an emotional attachment. It's mean!"

"It's a fish, Rachel. It's not like I took his puppy." She's quiet for a moment, looking out the window as Rachel turns onto their street. "Wanna help me name him?"

She pulls into the driveway and turns off the engine before looking over at her roommate. Santana is biting her lip, obviously holding in a laugh. It is funny, she has to admit. Before she can stop herself, she's giggling, and by the time they get into the house they're practically howling with laughter.

They both stop when they see Noah standing in the kitchen. He's shirtless and opening a package of microwave popcorn. "Uh, hey."

Santana snorts, which sends both girls into fits again, and the expression of absolute confusion on Noah's face just makes the entire thing more amusing. "I stole a fish!" she manages between gasps, lurching into the kitchen in her heels to place the fishbowl on the counter where he's standing.

He bends a little, looking at the dark little fish waving his fins. "You stole a fucking fish."

"And I got laid," she adds smugly before dissolving into giggles.

They're all laughing, and Rachel can't remember the last time she laughed so hard that her abs hurt and tears were rolling down her cheeks, but it feels wonderful. And all because she has a promiscuous kleptomaniac for a roommate.

Eventually they manage to stop laughing and catch their breath, and Rachel realizes that it's the most normal she and Noah have been around one another since their...fight? Break up? She still isn't sure what to call it.

"I need to sleep," Santana announces abruptly. She eyes the fishbowl on the counter. "I will spill him if I try to carry him up those steep-ass fucking stairs."

"He can stay in the kitchen," Rachel offers. "I'll be feeding him while you're gone anyhow, so it'll save me the effort of going up there."

Santana kisses Rachel loudly on the lips. "You're the best. And you're the best," she tells Puck, kissing him the same way. "Good night!" She disappears up the stairs, leaving a fishbowl on the counter and her shoes in the middle of the floor.

"So, you're staying here for the weekend?" Noah asks, breaking the awkward silence that has fallen around them.

"Yes. Are you leaving tomorrow?"

He points at himself with both thumbs. "Jew. I'll be here."

"Oh." She hadn't even considered that she wasn't the only one staying in Columbus for the weekend, and now she feels ridiculous for it. Of course Noah isn't going home to celebrate a Christian holiday. "Well. Santana woke me up to go rescue her from hiding in the bushes, so..." She trails off, gesturing toward her bedroom.

"Yeah. Wait, hiding in the bushes?"

Rachel grins. "Apparently she was actually worried about getting caught this time. She was hiding in the bushes in front of the Chi Omega house."

"The one with the owl?" She nods. "That's epic."

"I'm a little scared of what she might do to top it," she admits, liking the way he looks when he laughs. She hasn't seen it enough lately. "Anyhow. Good night, Noah."

"Night, Rach."

* * *

Fuck his life.

It's been weeks since Rachel went back to Lima to see her dads, so he just assumed she'd take advantage of the four-day weekend. He's going to a bar Friday night to see a band one of his friends is in, but otherwise he had every intention of hang around the house, being lazy and catching up on some homework. Just thinking about being alone in the house with her fucks up his sleep.

He fucking misses her. Naked and moaning his name, yeah, but other stuff too, like the way she sounds when she sings along with the radio in the car or how she mumbles in her sleep. (Once, he swears, she was moaning his name. He knew she wanted to be up early to work out the next morning, but he'd slipped his hand between her thighs before he could really stop himself. Sex is a workout, right?) He wants to be what they were before, even though he doesn't know if it's even possible. He's waiting though; it's all on her.

He wouldn't admit it, but he's totally hiding in his room on Friday, staying in bed and fucking around on the internet until his stomach starts growling. He pulls on a pair of gym shorts to go find something to eat, and the first thing he sees when he gets in the kitchen is Rachel.

Of course.

She's wearing a tee shirt and a pair of those tiny cotton shorts girls seem to have in every fucking color (hers are yellow), stirring a mug of what he assumes, based on the way the kitchen smells, is coffee.

"Good morning. Or, afternoon, I guess," she amends, glancing at the clock on the wall above the stove. "I made a whole pot if you want some."

"Thanks." He pours a mug and carries it with him to the fridge. He finds a carton of leftover chicken lo mein he knows Santana left that, obviously, she isn't going to eat now, grabs a fork, and starts eating it cold.

Rachel, who has been watching from where she's standing near the sink, makes a strangled little noise. "That is about six different kinds of disgusting."

"What?" he asks, talking with his mouth full. "Cold Chinese is good."

"With coffee?" He shrugs. "You think I'd be used to your eating habits by now."

He shrugs again, shoving another massive bite of noodles in his mouth. He chews a bit, then takes a drink of coffee. Okay, so it isn't the greatest combination, but not so terrible.

"Noah?" He looks over at her, standing there with all of her weight on one foot, watching the finger she's using to trace the rim of her mug. "Do you think we can try to go back to normal?"

He tells the part of his brain that's shooting off fireworks to shut the fuck up so he can think, then asks, "Do you mean normal like having sex on the couch or normal like before winter break?"

She bites her bottom lip, and he knows it's because she wants to smile. He can't actually remember the last time he let himself even _look _at her. He's missed how fucking cute she is sometimes. "Normal like not avoiding each other. Maybe we could have dinner tonight or something. Obviously not Chinese."

He grins. "Sounds good, but I can't tonight. Alex's band is playing at some bar, and I said I'd go."

"Oh. Of course." She doesn't hide her disappointment very well. "Tomorrow then."

"Yeah. Hey, you should come with me tonight. They got the gig because his girlfriend is one of the bartenders, so we won't get carded, and you can take a bunch of notes on how they can improve that I'll pretend I'm going to give them." He laughs at the outrage that flashes across her face and holds up his hands. "I'm kidding. They're actually pretty good."

"All right," she agrees after a moment.

When she walks into the living room that night and asks if he's ready to go, he seriously questions how smart it was to invite her to this thing. Maybe it's just because he's spent the last couple of months trying not to notice her, but she look amazing. She's wearing a blue plaid shirtdress with a brown belt and little flat sandals. The front of her hair is pulled back, and there's nothing overtly sexy about any of it (the dress is longer than the skirts she used to wear in high school and it isn't low-cut either), but he wants to peel it off her and fuck her against the living room wall. He thinks that, like so many other things, it's probably just because it's Rachel.

The bar isn't too crowded since it's a holiday weekend, they're running a special on Jack and Coke, and Rachel is sitting next to him acting almost normal. It's the best time he's had in weeks.

She reaches over and squeezes his bicep. "They're better than I expected," she tells him, her mouth close to his ear so she doesn't have to shout. "Either that or I'm even more drunk than I think I am."

"Maybe you should slow down."

She shrugs and takes another sip of her drink, her eyes locked with his. She's trying to fucking kill him.

They stay until last call, hanging out with the band after they finish their set and nursing drinks. (Neither of them is drunk. They're getting served even though they're underage because Alex's girlfriend is cool, and they aren't interested in getting her in trouble for it.) Still, they're both tipsy, so they get a cab because Puck is absolutely not down with driving under the influence, and Rachel would lose her mind if he tried. He is, however, intoxicated enough that his brain-to-mouth filter is malfunctioning, because he leans over and whispers, "Remember the last time we were in a cab?"

She hisses his name, and he can tell by the look on her face that she remembers, but she doesn't look mad. When they get back to the house, she's practically dancing through the kitchen, and it's such a change that he doesn't even know what to do. He just stands there, leaning against the end of the counter and watching her. Maybe he's smiling a little.

"I can't decide if I want to make Easy Mac or drink Jameson," she's saying, opening and closing cabinets (including the ones that hold dishes instead of food) and looking at the shelves in the pantry. She looks over at him and stops. "What?"

He shrugs. "I miss you."

"Noah-"

"No, don't," he interrupts, pushing away from the counter. "I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

"Shut up," she says seriously. "I miss you, too. And this really isn't a conversation to be having under the influence, but I'm way, way past the whole Colin thing." She laughs a little, shaking her head. "It just seems important for you to know, however inappropriate the timing. Right now."

"It's rude to tell someone to shut up," he teases, walking toward her. He rests his hands on her hips and looks at her seriously. "I missed you, Rachel."

She rises up on her toes, her arms coming up to rest on his shoulders, and presses her lips to his, and it's like his mind goes blank. All he can think about is Rachel: her lips under his, the way her hair feels slipping between his fingers, her nails moving gently over his scalp. It's been too long.

She makes that noise in her throat, the one that goes straight to his dick every time, and he pulls back, pushing her away a little to give himself room to breathe. "We can't do this like this."

"Like what?" she asks. She's all breathless and she keeps trying to move closer to him.

"Drunk or whatever." He feels like such a fucking girl. "I can't."

She whispers his name, her eyes on her hands as they slide down to rest on his chest. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, about everything. It turned into such a big deal, and it just...isn't." She shakes her head and looks up to meet his eyes. "What he did hurt my feelings and bruised my ego, but it doesn't matter."

"Rachel-"

She cuts him off. "Don't interrupt me, please." She smiles when he narrows his eyes at her. "It doesn't matter," she repeats, "because I don't care. He's nothing. He's been nothing, and I knew that. I was being selfish and incredibly stupid, because he's nothing, and I had something."

It's just this side of nonsense, the things she's saying, and it kinda freaks him out. Because he thinks he actually understands what she's getting at. He needs to hear her say it, say it in words that follow some sort of logic. "Something?"

"You," she whispers. "At least, I think I had you."

She isn't drunk any more, not even a little bit. She feels like she's stuck, waiting between heartbreak and something wonderful (and she knows that's terribly dramatic, even for her). She tries to concentrate on the details. The way Noah's heart feels, beating under her hand, and how his eyes look golden in this light. "Please say something." She swallows hard, trying to rid herself of the lump in her throat. "Noah."

His eyes close for a moment. "Rachel." He shakes his head, just a tiny bit, and meets her eyes. "You had me," he agrees.

Her eyes sting with tears, and she stands on her toes to press her lips to his in a gentle kiss. "You aren't just saying it?" she asks between kisses. "It's not because you're drunk?"

He laughs against her lips, then pulls back a bit to look at her like she's crazy. And maybe she is, because she has tears in her eyes. "I'm not drunk, Rach." He brings his hands up to cup her cheeks. "Don't cry."

"I'm not," she insists, even as a tear slips down her cheek. She turns her face into his hand when he brushes the moisture away with his thumb and presses her lips to his palm. "God, Noah, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I took so long."

He doesn't want to keep doing this here, standing in the kitchen, but he thinks that if they go anywhere else, they're just going to end up naked, and they should probably actually have this conversation. "Why did you wait so long? Why now?"

"Now? Because this is the first time in weeks that you've actually looked me in the eye," she says simply. She squeezes her eyes shut, tight, and a few more tears escape. He wipes them away, and she offers him a little smile. "I waited because I'm stupid and stubborn and proud. And because I was afraid. I was afraid that it wouldn't matter, that you wouldn't want me any more."

"Wouldn't want you?" he repeats incredulously. "Jesus fuck, Rachel, you are stupid." He kisses her hard, nipping a little at her bottom lip. "I want you. Fuck, I want you," he says again, kissing her again, this time gently, one arm dropping around her waist to pull her against him. She breathes out his name when his lips slide along her jaw. "How can _you _be this stupid?" he mutters against her ear.

She doesn't have an answer for that. To be fair, she would probably struggle to answer even more basic questions right now, for she's completely distracted by the way he's teasing her earlobe with his teeth. Her hands slide down his sides, fisting in the fabric of his tee shirt when his lips settle over her pulse and he sucks the skin there gently. "Please, Noah." She isn't sure exactly what she's asking for.

He kisses her again, his tongue moving against hers and pushing all the words out of her head again. No one else has ever been able to do that; her mind races constantly, and until Noah, that included during sex. The fact that he clouds her brain with a simple kiss must count for something, and it's worth considering. Later.

He grins against her lips when he feels her tugging on the hem of his tee shirt, the backs of her hands brushing his skin. He grips her wrists to still her hands, pulling back to look down at her. "Is this really what you want?" He smirks at the glimmer he sees in her eyes. "I mean us, Rachel. Whatever we are." He frowns. "We should talk about that."

"I want you," she tells him simply, twisting her wrists in his hands so that their fingers are woven together. "I want to be with you."

Fuck talking. He crashes his lips against hers, deepening the kiss when she gasps in surprise. He needs her, all of her, and he needs her _right now_. He'd managed to be friends (or whatever) with her for four years without touching her, but now he has no fucking clue how he did it. Because now that he's had her? Now that she's standing in front of him and saying that she wants him? He can't think of anything that would keep him from doing this.

They leave a trail of clothes from the kitchen to Rachel's bedroom, and by the time she scoots to the middle of the bed, they're both naked.

She loves sex with Noah. It sounds shallow, but the best thing about it is how they just _know _one another, and it's more than just knowing each other's bodies. She understands that he isn't comfortable taking about his emotions, but that it _means _something when his thumbs brush over the pulse in her wrist or he presses a a kiss to her temple. And now, his kisses are urgent, insistent, but his hands are gentle, and the way he looks at her when he lies beside her makes her breath catch in her throat.

He trails his fingertips from her wrist to her shoulder, across her collarbone and through the hollow of her throat, watching as they move. Down, brushing the valley between her breasts and coming to a stop just below her navel. She lets out a little breath, and he looks up to meet her eyes. "I missed you." He's repeating himself, but it sounds so good that she doesn't mind.

"Me too," she whispers, her back arching when his other hand comes up to cup her breast. "Noah, please."

He dips his head to taste her skin, to tease her nipple with his tongue and teeth while his hand ghosts down her abdomen, not making contact with her skin until it's between her thighs. "_Fuck_, you're wet," he hisses against her skin, his teeth grazing her collarbone before his tongue soothes the sting.

She shifts her hips because even though he's touching her, it's not enough. She needs more; more friction, more of him. "Don't tease me," she insists, grasping his wrist with her hand so he'll touch her where she wants. She whimpers when he brushes her clit (_finally_), but the sound is lost when he crushes his lips against hers. "Please," she gasps, turning her head to break the kiss. Undeterred, his lips travel along her jaw, and he sucks on the spot just below her ear that always makes her breath catch. "_Noah_."

Maybe it's wrong, but he loves the way it sounds when she begs. It's so different from the way she is out in the world; he likes that he's the only one who gets to see her this way, who sees her lose control. He groans when she wraps her hand around his length. He bats her hand away, shifting until he's between her legs and he can stop to look at her.

Her hair is fanned over the pillows, her lips parted, her chest flushed, and her eyes locked with his. "You're beautiful," he tells her before kissing her gently. He sips at her lips while he reaches into the nightstand for a condom, maneuvering so he can put it on without taking his lips from hers, then sliding into her slowly.

The way it feels when he's inside her literally takes her breath away, and it's a long moment before her brain catches up and she gasps. He feels so _right_, even though she needs a moment to get used to him, that it gives her goosebumps. She shifts her hips, whimpering when her movements force him deeper. "Fuck," he mutters, watching her face as he begins to move over her. His eyes are burning into hers, and it's so intense that she has to close her eyes, letting her head sink deeper into the pillows.

It's good. It's _so good_ that he's glad they have the whole weekend together because he's not sure how impressive this is going to be. Noah Puckerman has _never _before gone seven weeks without sex, and he just did for this girl - this fucking amazing girl - so fuck you if you don't understand how close he is. He wants to go slowly, to make it last, but that just isn't fucking happening.

He pulls one of her legs up, hitching it around his hip, and she practically keens when the movement drives him deeper. "_There_," she breathes, her eyes opening to meet his. "Oh, Noah, _please_."

The begging is fucking hot, but he's losing his shit. He slips a hand between them, brushes his fingers over her nerves, and he knows the little whimper that falls from her lips means she's close. He angles his hips, and she's right on the verge, her fingernails biting into his shoulder blade. "Come, Rach," he grinds out. He increases the pressure of his fingers and leans down to press a kiss to her neck, just below her ear. "Baby, please."

She comes so hard that she literally sees spots, her fingernails biting into Noah's shoulder blade when she feels him follow her over the edge.

He's still on top of her, hot and breathing heavily, but she likes him there, his lips brushing over her shoulder. She skims her fingers up and down his back, tracing gently over the half-moons indentations left by her fingernails. "I can't feel my fingers," she whispers, her lips quirking upwards.

He shifts away from her with a smirk, and she watches as he ties the condom and tosses it in the trash can. He lies on his back, pulling her with him so her head is resting on his shoulder. He lifts her hand to his lips, kissing each of her fingertips in turn. "It was pretty good, huh?"

"It was wonderful," she corrects, pressing a quick kiss to his jaw. She drapes her leg over his hip and moves a little closer. Her mind is already drifting, and she knows she'll be asleep soon. They didn't do this often before - she knows that having one's own space is important to restful sleep - but it feels right, falling asleep wrapped around him.

* * *

He wakes her sometime after four, murmuring filthy things in her ear with his hand between her thighs. She returns the favor, so to speak, but Puck totally thinks he got the better end of the deal when he wakes up to find her gorgeous lips wrapped around his cock around sunrise.

* * *

Puck makes french toast when they get up Saturday morning (afternoon), and they're sitting at the dining table eating when she says, "We have to talk about this."

"Wha?" he asks around a mouthful of bacon. (Yeah, he's a bad Jew. All the delicious breakfast meats are pork. Sue him.)

"Everything. We just spent weeks ignoring and avoiding one another. We were in an undefined relationship that was certainly more than sex, and we fell apart," she says. "Noah, I can't stand you being angry at me like this again."

He shakes his head. "Rachel. I was never mad at you," he says seriously.

"What?"

She look so confused that he wants to laugh, but he knows it's not the right time for that. "I wasn't mad at you. I was really fucking confused, and your mood swings were pissing me off," he says bluntly. "I was trying to give you time to figure out what you wanted."

"I already had what I wanted," she breathes, and his heart does this weird clenching thing. "We're both so stupid."

She's right, so he just smiles at her.

"Noah, we have to talk about things, because obviously we're morons," she tells him, and she look so serious that this time he does have to laugh. "This isn't funny!"

He leans across the table to kiss her even though she's glaring at him. "It isn't funny. You're hot when you're mad."

"Puck, I'm being completely serious. Our communication skills suck."

He leans back in his chair and nods. If she's using his nickname, he should probably stop teasing her. "We'll work on it. We can even start right now."

"Excellent."

"Tell me about Colin."

"Okay," she agrees, nodding slowly.

So she does. (And when Puck hears that she found out that the fuckwit was a cheater through Facebook, he wants to find him and rearrange his face. Shit is low.)

* * *

"What are we going to tell Kurt and Santana?"

Puck groans, turning his face into the pillow. He's still trying to regenerate the brain cells she shut down with her crazy sex tricks. (There weren't really any tricks; she just _does _that to him.) Seriously, the last fucking thing he wants to think about are their roommates. "Don't care," he mutters.

"Noah, I'm serious. When they left we were barely speaking, and now we're back to this."

He turns his head to look at her. She's propped up on his pillows, the blankets pulled up under her arms, twisting the ends of her (sex) hair and worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. She's gorgeous. "This?"

She cocks her head and lifts her eyebrows when she looks at him. "Noah, I have a bruise on the inside of my thigh _from your teeth_."

(He's so fucking proud of that shit. And he knows she loved it.)

"I'm serious. What are we going to tell them?"

He sighs, grabbing her hand and brushing a kiss over the pulse in her wrist. "That you're my girl."

She absolutely beams at him, her eyes bright in the dim room. She slides down, moving so her face is right near his. "What if I don't want to belong to you?" she teases.

"Too fucking bad," he scoffs. "You already do."

He knows that the whole thing should "offend her feminist sensibilities" or some bullshit, but the way she brushes her lips over his lets him know that it doesn't. He can tell that she likes it, the idea of belonging to him, and he gets it.

See, the thing is - and it's really fucking weird - he's pretty sure he already belongs to her.


End file.
